It was only a matter of time before the business of golf and the business of cryptocurrency crossed paths.
As we’ve already seen in other sports, athletes are structuring their contracts to be paid out in crypto, and in golf, the PGA Tour and players such as Tiger Woods, Bryson DeChambeau and Joel Dahmen have all embraced the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and crypto to varying degrees.
Now, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which is crypto-speak for a company without any top-down leadership that relies upon community-based decision-making, called LinksDAO is merging the golf world with the crypto world in the form of a private golf club of sorts.
The mission in a nutshell pic.twitter.com/JV17oWXdHf
— LinksDAO (@linksdao) December 18, 2021
LinksDAO has raised upwards of $11 million via the sale of its membership NFTs with the hope of purchasing a Top-100 golf course in the world as early as this summer.
- LinksDAO sold out of 9,090 NFT memberships; 6,363 Leisure Membership NFTs at 0.18 ETH (~$680), and 2,727 Global Membership NFTs at 0.72 ETH (~$2,730)
- Interestingly, the LinksDAO memberships don’t guarantee actual membership if and when a physical course is purchased, but it does guarantee the right to become a member at said course (think: a ground-floor initiation fee)
- According to Markets Insider, LinksDAO Membership NFTs have seen a total sales volume of more than $3 million in the secondary market.
After the first golf course is purchased, LinksDAO has ambitions of purchasing more courses in the United States and beyond, creating an international membership of thousands that could mirror what golf course conglomerates such as ClubCorp or Troon do with national memberships, but via crypto, NFTs and blockchains.
LinksDAO will also retain 10% of the supply of each membership that it can later sell to raise funds for marketing, partnerships, and strategic purposes, a la a public company selling its own stock to raise funds.
As you might imagine, the search for a course of that caliber to host this first-of-its-kind endeavor is slim pickings.
That’s why the DAO will not limit itself to simply 100 golf courses. Other options include designing and building its own course, purchasing a Top-500 course and renovating it to Top-100 status or purchasing a course that has previously held a PGA Tour event, therefore jumping the line in terms of public awareness.
Watching what happens next will be interesting. LinksDAO has said it will be making a separate NFT sale in 2022 to fund and support an acquisition.
What courses are in the DAO’s crosshairs? How will the traditional institutions react and respond? What’s next for LinksDAO? Only those with memberships are privy to that information.
