Cristiano Ronaldo NFT Sells For Close To $290K Surpassing NBA Top Shot's Lebron James NFT Sale

A Cristiano Ronaldo NFT sold for $289,920, beating out NBA Top Shot’s highest priced NFT sale – a legendary slam dunk moment from NBA star Lebron James.

What happened: The Ronaldo NFT is a single card of the five-time Ballon d’Or winner, sold by Ethereum based fantasy soccer game Sorare. The unique Ronaldo card was purchased by a user named FC Camembert on Sorare’s transfer market.

“Ninetynine percent of people probably think it is stupid to spend so much on something that you cannot 'touch.’ My parents don't get it and think I am a bit crazy,” commented Camembert on the latest addition to his NFT card collection. According to him, the purchase was not motivated by speculation. “For me, Ronaldo is priceless,” he said, adding that he had no intentions of selling this NFT any time soon.

Sorare’s CEO Nicolas Julia also commented on the expensive purchase. “It’ll look like a bargain soon! NFTs are so much more powerful compared to physical trading cards,” he said on Twitter.

Why it matters: Sports tokenization platforms and NFTs corresponding to individual sports personalities and winning moments have gained a lot of traction since the NFT boom began to take shape.

Over the weekend, Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski’s NFT trading cards sold for 830 ETH, which amounted to $1.6 million at the time of sale.

Gronkowski decided to mint and sell his own NFT collection after witnessing the success of the tokens across platforms like OpenSea and NBA Top Shot.

"Now fans will be able to get a piece of the action and share these iconic Super Bowl moments with me in this all-new digital format with my Championship Series NFT,” he said.