Bryson's agent: Underwhelming NFT release shows golf is 'niche sport'

Bryson DeChambeau became the first golfer to release a personal set of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) this past week in an attempt to capitalize on the latest boom in the digital collectible space.

NFTs - digital certificates attached to unique digital assets that use blockchain technology - are becoming popular in the sports world thanks to the success of NBA Top Shot.

Rob Gronkowski and Patrick Mahomes used NFTs to release their own sets of digital collectibles earlier in March and fetched millions of dollars in sales.

However, DeChambeau's venture was not nearly as lucrative. He created five different digital trading cards, one of which was one-of-one while the other four were limited to 18 copies. He put the items up for auction on Open Sea, a popular NFT trading platform, for 24 hours and sold 10 of the 73 NFTs available for an approximate total of $64,000 (the sales were made in a digital currency called Ether, which varies in value relative to USD).

"Whether he made $2,000 or $20 million, he had no idea how this was going to play out," DeChambeau's agent Brett Falkoff told Brian Wacker of Golf Digest. "What it shows (by the total) is that golf is still a niche sport."

It's still possible to bid on DeChambeau's unsold NFTs, so more sales are possible.

It's not clear where the proceeds from DeChambeau's sales will go, and Falkoff told Wacker that the golfer hasn't determined that yet.

Mahomes donated a portion of the proceeds from his NFT sales to charity, as will Calgary Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk, who on Friday became the first NHL player to release an NFT.

"It was a total experiment," Falkoff said of DeChambeau's digital cards. "This is a learning process for everyone. It's no different than how he approaches golf."