In brief
- Crypto exchange Binance will sponsor musician The Weeknd’s upcoming world tour.
- The partnership will feature multiple NFT initiatives, as well as a $2M donation to the artist’s XO Humanitarian Fund.
Popular musician The Weeknd first dove into the NFT scene early last year as the market was heating up, and he’s continued to make moves since then. The latest of these is enlisting the world's biggest crypto exchange to back his upcoming world tour and launch NFTs around it.
Today, Binance and The Weeknd announced that the exchange will sponsor the artist’s After Hours ‘Til Dawn world tour, which begins in July and will kick off in United States and Canada. A Binance release describes it as a “crypto-powered tour,” and claims it will be the first global concert tour to tap Web3 technology for fan experiences.
Binance will work with the Toronto-based HXOUSE community incubator to develop an NFT collection around the tour, along with co-branded merchandise. Concert-goers will also receive a virtual ticket stub that can be redeemed for commemorative NFTs.
As part of the partnership, Binance will donate $2 million to the XO Humanitarian Fund, which The Weeknd formed earlier this year in his role as a United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Global Goodwill Ambassador. The Weeknd and Binance will also collaborate on additional NFTs and donate 5% of those NFT sales to the fund.
Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, and the firm operates an NFT marketplace, as well. An NFT is a token that serves as a proof of ownership to an item, and they’re often used for digital goods like artwork and collectibles. The NFT market swelled to $25 billion worth of trading volume in 2021.
The Weekend (born Abel Tesfaye) first entered the NFT space in April 2021 with the release of artwork via the Nifty Gateway platform. Last October, he joined the board of directors for Autograph, an NFT platform co-founded by NFL star Tom Brady, and has since released his own Ethereum NFTs through it.
The Weekend also invested in Everyrealm, a firm that invests in and develops virtual NFT land properties in metaverse video games like The Sandbox and Decentraland.