E146: Ken Goldin and the future of sporting memorabilia

The market for sports memorabilia and collectibles has grown rapidly during the pandemic, and is currently a $10billion industry and our guest today is at the centre of it.Ken Goldin is founder of Goldin Auctions which was recently the subject of $40million dollar investment from The Chernin Group and a number of celebrities from across sports and entertainment. Peter Chernin, an investor in Barstool Sports and the Action Network, led the round, accompanied by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, NBA stars Kevin Durant and Dwyane Wade, NFL star Deshaun Watson, internet celebrity Logan Paul and media star Bill Simmons.Founded in 2012, Goldin Auctions has become one of the largest auction houses for sports collectibles, trading cards and memorabilia. The company grossed $800,000 in its first year, and more than $100 million in 2020. To date, it has overseen more than $300 million in sales.We talk about the market for nostalgia, and the future of the industry, and specifically the rise of crypto assets and digital memorabilia such as NBA Topshots and other Non Fungible Tokens, or NFTs.What’s the value of this new asset class, how’s it going to evolve and what happens when every sports team and league floods the market with their own branded trading products. If anyone in the world knows the answer to that, it’s Ken Goldin.If you like the Unofficial Partner podcasts, you’ll really like our weekly newsletter, which is read by thousands of people across the global sports business, and is where we talk about the topics and themes that arise from our podcast conversations.We can send it direct to your inbox every Thursday, all you have to do is sign up via unofficialpartner.com, where you’ll also find our back catalogue of podcasts.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.