John Terry withdraws Premier League trophy on NFT after legal intervention | John Terry

John Terry has removed the Premier League trophy from the non-fungible token (NFT) cartoon digital assets he is promoting on Twitter after legal intervention by the league.

The Premier League trophy is trademark protected and its use in any commercial endeavor requires a licensing agreement with the league. The league wrote to Terry and ‘Ape Kids Club’, the NFT collection promoted by the former Chelsea and England captain, to make the point this week.

Other tweets featuring NFTs, a digital asset bought and sold online, of famous players depicted as cartoon monkeys next to the Premier League trophy have been deleted. A tweet featuring the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, Community Shield and FA Cup trophies was on Terry’s Twitter profile at the time of writing.

Chelsea have also leaned into cartoons as some have included images of the club badge. UEFA, which organizes the Europa League and Champions League, have taken legal advice and are investigating the matter.

The Football Association is also aware of NFT activity linked to Terry’s account, which includes use of the FA Cup trophy, Community Shield and England kit.

Terry, who has taken on a consulting role at Chelsea’s academy, has been heavily promoting the “Ape Kids Club” NFTs on Twitter. Others who have endorsed them are Bobby Zamora, Jack Wilshere and Nigel de Jong. Terry’s former Chelsea and England teammate Ashley Cole retweeted a post containing an image of the trophies. Chelsea and England full-back Reece James has tweeted about acquiring a ‘Mutant Ape’ NFT.

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The NFTS “Ape Kids Club” is an offshoot of another popular NFT, the “Bored Ape Yacht Club”. The collection includes 10,000 digital illustrations of cartoon monkeys. The “Ape Kids Club” has 9,999 different monkey NFTs available for purchase.

NFTs are unique digital assets stored on the Blockchain and exchanged in cryptocurrencies. Ownership and provenance of NFTs are verified by Blockchain, an online registry. The two biggest cryptocurrencies are bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are over 5,000 different varieties.

Critics claim that tokens are potentially dangerous financial assets. NFTs are still part of an unregulated financial industry.

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