Sam Bankman-Fried And Taylor Swift Were Negotiating A $100M Sponsorship Deal Before FTX Collapse: Report

Known for several high-profile partnerships with celebrities and sports personalities, the flamboyant Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX FTT/USD, was in the final stages of negotiating a sponsorship deal worth more than $100 million with 11-time Grammy Award winner Taylor Swift.

The failed proposal apparently involved a prospective sponsorship of a tour and a system for tickets that used digital certificates in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), according to a Financial Times report.

Citing people familiar with the talks, the report stated that although Swift herself never considered agreeing to promote the exchange, one former FTX employee reportedly said that the exchange had sought a "light degree of endorsement" from Swift on social media.

FTX spent hundreds of millions of dollars on major advertising campaigns and sponsorship deals with specific celebrities.

The company signed agreements with the NHL's Washington Wizards and Capitals, the NBA's Miami Heat and Golden State Warriors, Major League Baseball, and esports powerhouse TSM.

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Senior FTX Executives Against The Agreement

Discussions that started in September 2021, ended this spring, much to the relief of FTX's seasoned senior executives, who were at odds with Bankman-Fried and his close circle of associates who supported the deal.

“No one really liked the deal. It was too expensive from the beginning,” a person was quoted as saying.

They said the price of the arrangement was "really high… really f**king high. That’s front of the soccer jersey level prices.”

Several members of the FTX marketing team, FTX.US president Brett Harrison, and FTX.US general attorney Ryne Miller, a former partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, were reportedly against the sale.

They both encouraged Bankman-Fried to end the negotiations.

Others questioned Swift's ability to benefit the FTX user base, despite Swift recently being the first female artist in history to spend 60 consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 chart.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are looking into Bankman-Fried, who left his position as CEO of FTX on the same day that the exchange and its associated entities filed for bankruptcy.

Bankman-Fried recently claimed in an interview that he only had $100,000 left of his formerly $26 billion fortune.

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Photo: Courtesy of Eva Rinaldi on flickr.