Friends is back! The fans were eagerly waiting for the famous sitcom's much-anticipated reunion episode. The 90’s show has gathered a lot of fame over the years. Such that even after 16 years of the airing of its last episode the series is relevant even today.
Friends is back! The fans were eagerly waiting for the famous sitcom's much-anticipated reunion episode. The 90’s show has gathered a lot of fame over the years. Such that even after 16 years of the airing of its last episode the series is relevant even today.
Recently, HBO released the trailer for the reunion special on their Youtube channel. In just 6 days, the trailer amassed 18 million views on Youtube. That’s just Youtube though. Fans flooded Instagram and Twitter with iconic Friends clips showing support to the highly demanded reunion.
Friends Revenue:
Friends is produced by Warner Bros. It still manages to earn 1 Billion dollars each year from syndication revenue. Also, It was negotiated that the cast will get 2% of the syndication revenue. This entitles the main cast (Jennifer Aniston, Mathew Perry, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt Le-Blanc) a whopping $20 million each every year.
Friends have a fan demographic from 15-50-year-olds. Friends is run on comedy central on a loop for many days and nobody complains. Even Netlfix, who produced their own show for the highest of $130 million, bought rights to stream the show from warner media for $100 million. This deal is only valid for 12 months. That’s how big the market is.
What I want to imagine here is the potential for the show to launch NFTs.
NFT Sales:
Since the beginning of the year, along with cryptocurrency, NFT has also taken the digital space by storm. It has given artists freedom and complete control over their art pieces. There is little to no intervention of the middle man and the transactions are smooth.
Digital Art:
NFTs have allowed artists like Beeple, to sell his art for millions of dollars. The highest his art was sold for was $69 Million. Although digital art has found its space in NFT markets, the markets are not limited to that. Any digital asset can be sold as an NFT.
Memes:
Recently memes are making the headlines for getting sold for thousands of dollars. “Dangerous Girl” meme, in which a girl is smirking in front of a burning house, got sold for $500,000. She also has 10% royalty in that meme and thus will continue to profit from that meme.
The infamous “Charlie Bit My Finger….Again!” has been sold for $720,000. That Youtube video will be taken down now and the owner of the NFT will have the original copy now.
Sports:
After NBA Top shot made $338 million by the mid of march, other sports have also entered the NFT market. Dynamo and Kyiv are about to launch NFT to sell on the new Binance NFT marketplace. The NFT will act as tickets for their matches in the upcoming season. The team hopes that about 25% of the future tickets will be bought by using NFTs.
Other football teams have taken a similar route. They are offering rights to take certain decisions of the team to the NFT holders. Special access to content, digital arts, chance to meet the teams, etc are being offered to anyone who owns the team's NFT. This creates a special bond and feeling of ownership for the fans which was missing earlier.
Shows And Their NFTs:
So, if a popular show like Friends, had to step into this booming NFT space, it is bound to record big numbers. This idea of mine has been influenced by Fox.
Krapapolis:
The special thing about this show is that it will be the 1st show to be curated entirely on blockchain. Fox aims to bring their advertisers into the blockchain world with this move. The show is aimed to advertise the NFT company called Blockchain Creative Labs.
The show will be created by Dan Harmon who is known for his animated show Rick and Morty. The show is named Krapopolis, which is set in mythical ancient Greece. It involves a family of gods, humans, monsters which are trying to run a city.
What Fox is planning is to curate and sell videos, gifs, goods, arts, etc on its dedicated token-based platform. They will also offer tokens that can be used by super fans for exclusive content, news, special experiences, etc.
Friends:
In 2019, Friends props were auctioned for the Trevor Project. That auction involved auction of Hugsy (Joey’s stuffed penguin), Ross Armadillo costume, autographed pilot scripts, etc. This auction alone generated $241,000.
If Friends had taken the NFT route for its reunion, it could have generated millions of dollars. It would have created a buzz about NFT. They could have sold tickets to their Reuninon’s live taping as NFTs. Short interviews before and after the taping of the reunion could have been sold as NFTs.
Other content like bloopers, never-before-seen clips, auditions for various roles, etc. could have earned a lot of money for them. Many EDM artists are doing this. They are providing access to never seen before content by creating NFTs and using them as a pass.
Speaking of music, The Rembrandts could make huge money too. The Rembrandts are the band responsible for the Friends theme song “I will be there for you”. Like other artists, they could sell the previous edition of the songs as NFT.
Recently Justin Blau made nearly $12 million by selling some of his music as NFT. This included never-before-seen clips, backstage videos, custom art based on his music, etc. The Rembrandts, I think could easily bring millions of dollars, especially after the fan base friends have. The friends theme song has about 10 million views on Youtube alone.
I for one believe that they could have created records in the NFT world. Not only that, they could have continued to gain profit by having royalties in them.