FanMint

FanMint created and operated a marketplace for digital tokens, structured as NFTs, that represented a fractional interest in a college athlete's future professional sports earnings. Fans could buy and trade these tokens on the platform, effectively speculating on the career success of the athletes. The model was enabled by the NCAA's 2021 rule change allowing athletes to monetize their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) (public record).

FanMint ceased operations in 2023. The shutdown was driven by a combination of the broader crypto market downturn, which severely depressed NFT trading volumes and speculative appetite, and significant uncertainty around whether athlete tokens would be classified as unregistered securities by US regulators (per Bloomberg, 2023). The firm's business model proved unsustainable outside of the 2021-2022 NFT bubble.

Unlike a sports agency, which negotiates contracts and endorsements for a commission, FanMint operated as a marketplace and technology platform that created a publicly tradable financial instrument from an athlete's future income. It did not represent athletes in contract talks. Its core innovation—and source of legal risk—was treating an athlete's labor income as a securitizable asset class open to retail speculation.

FanMint focused primarily on high-profile college football and men's basketball players with projected paths to the NFL and NBA, respectively. The firm's token valuation model relied on forecasting professional earnings, making athletes with a high likelihood of being drafted in early rounds the most attractive candidates for tokenization. The exact roster of athletes tokenized was not permanently fixed in the public record.

The central regulatory risk was whether FanMint’s athlete tokens constituted 'investment contracts' under the Howey Test and therefore were unregistered securities. Because token buyers were investing money with an expectation of profit derived from the managerial efforts of the athlete and the platform, many legal observers argued the tokens met the Howey criteria (public record). FanMint shut down before the SEC brought any specific enforcement action against the model.