The Australian Open, the annual tennis tournament run by Tennis Australia, has seemingly ended its non-fungible token (NFT) initiative.
Launched in 2022, at the height of the NFT craze, the project featured 6,776 AO Art Ball NFTs. Each NFT represented a 19cm x 19cm section of one of the tournament’s tennis courts, with metadata that updated in real-time to reflect match events, such as the winning shot landing on the specific court area.
When the minting began, each NFT ball was priced at 0.067 ETH, around $278. By 2023, the value had risen to approximately 0.23 ETH, or about $446.
However, the value has significantly decreased since then. Current data from OpenSea shows that the floor price for the Australian Open NFT Balls collection is now only 0.0079 ETH, roughly $25.
Tennis Australia continued to engage with NFT holders and fulfilled promises made for early 2024, but the project appears to have been largely forgotten this year.
While the dedicated website for the Artball NFTs and the Discord server are still active, the latest post on the X (Twitter) profile dates back to March 2024.
Though the project’s closure might seem surprising, it is part of a broader trend. Many companies have abandoned the NFT space as market interest has waned and regulatory uncertainty has increased.
For instance, in September 2023, Lacoste quietly ended its UNDW3 NFT project, shutting down related platforms without explanation, which raised concerns among its community.Â
Similarly, Nike’s RTFKT, an NFT studio, is set to wind down its operations this month. Immutable and Kraken have also decided to close their NFT marketplaces in favor of other ventures.
Regulatory pressures have played a role in these moves. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been active in cracking down on NFT projects in 2023 and 2024.Â
The SEC issued Wells notices to projects such as CyberKongz, OpenSea, and Immutable. The agency also fined Impact Theory, a Los Angeles-based media company, $6.1 million in 2023 for offering unregistered NFT securities. In September 2023, the SEC also imposed a $1 million fine on the Stoner Cats NFT project for similar violations.