They claim to be the internet's football team and want to reach the premier league by reinventing the "broken" model of club management.
The American group who recently bought League Two Crawley Town are storytellers.
Their name is similar to a manifesto. "We're All Going to Make it" is an acronym for "We're all going to make it" and is a common cry in the criptocurrency community.
Crawley's new owners feel they have everything in place to become the "transformative sports success story of Web 3.0" despite their first attempt to get into English football being unsuccessful.
If you're not familiar with the term 'Web 3.0', it's either a digital revolution driven by community empowerment or a buzzword that might mean a strengthening of the status quo.
In April, traditional finance was used to complete the purchase ofCrawley, a club that has never been higher than the third tier in the Football League.
A rookies team of football owners are getting their experiment under way.
The co-chairman of the town of Crawley helped launch a company back in 2020.
The group describes itself as an intellectual property development group. Digital characters called "Crypto Punks" can be purchased and sold.
It sold nearly 10,000 of them, along with limited-edition online graphic novels based on their stories, in the form of NFTs, which are one-of-a-kind digital assets.
About $200 million worth of transactions were driven by the sales. A $100 million investment was made by venture capitalist firms.
The 'Crypto Punks' may have tapped into a global community of interested collectors. The hype about trading in NFTs may have helped the value.
It came down to the narrative for Johnson.
He says that they brought in an illustrator who had worked with DC and Marvel to create the punks' characters.
That was the beginning of everything.
He thinks a mix of stories and speculation can bring success to the town.
The sale of their own NFT was launched on July 8th. Buyers received a virtual season ticket for the price of 0.35 ether.
A number of benefits are included. Access to exclusive content, including interviews with players behind the scenes, is one of the things that some of these mirror other clubs' equivalents. Special input and voting on the future are more unique.
On Friday, NFT-holders will be able to vote on whether the team should strengthen in attack, midfield or defence. The club's season ticket-holders are also invited to participate. If they don't win promotion in the next two seasons, Johnson's role will be subject to a vote.
They had sold over 10,000 by Thursday night, amounting to about 3.5 million dollars.
If NFT owners decide to sell them on, the club will receive a 7.5% royalty fee.
When Liverpool partnered with auction house Sotheby's in March to sell NFTs - images based on manager Jurgen Klopp and first-team players priced from £57 - only 5.7% were bought. Still, the 9,721 sales earned the club a reported £1.1m, with £281,000 said to have been donated to its charitable foundation.
In an interview with the Independent last month, Johnson said Wagmi's venture should be seen differently; that it was selling a football club to fans of NFTs rather than NFTs to football fans.
He hopes that the "Web 3.0 crypto audience" will appreciate their ambitions and want to be involved in what happens next.
To attract an audience willing to invest in their story is part of the plan for the club.
There are a lot of NFT projects that are just speculation.
Is it possible for a football club to root for each week? People attach themselves to that spine.
It's an even bigger story if we are able to move up the ranks of the English football league and bring that to this audience.
Last yearCrawley had 700 season ticket holders. We can help to tell the club's story by embracing it as ours. People can connect with it on an emotional level Making any of this have true success is important.
"You don't own 'web3', you don't own 'Web 3.0', you don't own 'Web 3.0', you don't own 'Web 3.0', you don't own 'Web 3.0', you don'town 'Web
The data available on trading platform Open Sea shows that a large number of buyers have decided to sell it rather than burn it. The value of the NFT has dropped from its launch price.
Johnson and his fellow investors say they are in it for the long haul regardless of whether they are more interested in telling a story or not.
Gary Vaynerchuck, Snowfro, and the president of the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers are all represented by them.
Since the takeover they have been busy.
Kevin Betsy was the new manager atCrawley. The kit and apparel are with Adidas.
League Two's top scorer last season, Dom Telford, was one of the new players they signed.
They signed a fly-on-the-wall documentary deal to record their first year in charge.
They played a game against Queens Park Rangers on Saturday. Broadfield Stadium probably didn't have a lot of discussion about Web 3.0, NFTs, and theBlockchain.
There has been a lot of controversy about those topics.
There are issues with the environment. Research shows that the operations needed to run the technology use more energy than in Argentina.
In November, millions of pounds were invested in a digital token inspired by the popular South Korean series Squid Game, which was revealed to be a scam when the token's creators made off with the money.
Since the end of 2021, cryptocurrencies have lost 60% of their value, with the crypto industry more widely losing over $2tn of its market cap. In November last year, Crawley's NFT sales would have been worth about £12.3m.
The equivalent of $2m was paid for the first ever NFT of the founder of the social media site. The owner tried to sell it this year and the highest offer was less than what he paid.
The risks of investing in the world of football can be seen in the so-called 'fan-tokens' marketed by clubs to their supporters.
One of the perks offered to the buyer was the chance to vote for songs to be played at matches. Manchester City and Lazio were found to have dropped in value by 70% and 50% respectively. Iqoniq went out of business in January.
When three of their players appeared in a promotion for Socios, they were found to have taken advantage of consumers' inexperience or credulity by the advertising standards authority. The ruling was going to be reviewed by the club.
Socios' partnership with West Ham was dissolved following a backlash from the club's supporters, who argued they were being unfairly "monetised".
One industry insider recently suggested that every single club in the Premier League was considering some form of NFT offering in the near future, predicting that 95% would fail.
According to Johnson, the offering is different.
He says that a lot of the NFT projects are done by people who don't know what they're doing. There are a lot of speculative projects. Not with the town ofCrawley.
The money I spent is helping to sustain a club that I'm rooting for even if our NFT prices go to zero.
The wage bill will be used to decrease season ticket prices for the local community.
It's similar to supporting a musician or band. You can either buy a shirt or stream their music online. It goes straight to the artist.
The average attendance last year was 2,300. They sold 900 kits.
It's fair to assume that other people will be interested in the progress of the club.
Johnson is hoping the story ends happily. The 'Savannah Bananas' baseball team is a reason for optimism, according to him.
The team from Georgia has amassed over two million followers on TikTok through their video posts.
The LA Dodgers and New York Yankees combined are less than that team.
They've become an internet sensation by ripping up many of the traditional rules of baseball, creating novelty and entertaining sideshows at every game that translate easily to social media, and by directing players to be more open in their play.
There is a 60,000 strong waiting list for tickets to the stadium.
They have no pathway to the MLB regardless of whether they win or lose. They have people that care.
It has to be a part of our story when we have remote fans that are trying to engage and be interested.
We need to be careful about it. We need to do something different. We feel good about where we are right now.
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