Saudi Arabia’s NFT collection skyrockets after surprising victory over Argentina

SNEAK PEEK

  • Events on the field have an impact off the field, which is why the value of national soccer team fan tokens is fluctuating significantly during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
  • Sales of the “The Saudis” collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) with a Saudi Arabia theme surged by 387%.
  • Argentina, one of the world’s top soccer teams, was defeated unexpectedly by the nation 2-1.

Argentina’s loss shocked fans and put an end to Italy’s 37-match unbeaten streak. A 1-2 loss by Argentina against Saudi Arabia resulted in a 31% drop in the price of the ARG fan token, which went from being worth $7.21 at the start of the game to $4.96 at the conclusion. The token has gained marginally to $5.36 as of this writing.

Investors in NFT offered support to Saudi Arabia, the match’s victor. According to OpenSea, trading activity and sales for a collection called “The Saudis” containing CryptoPunk-inspired art have increased by over 2,300% over the past six hours. The Saudi Arabian government or national football squad is not connected to the collection.

During this year’s World Cup, crypto tokens have grown in popularity among bettors. In the week leading up to the competition, Chiliz (CHZ), the native token of the Chiliz blockchain that powers Socios.com, the largest sports fan token maker platform, increased by 39% as fans basked in a new wave of hype.

But the excitement rapidly subsided, and other fan tokens, such as those of Brazil (BFT) and Portugal (POR), all fell and underperformed both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).