The lede: > The unpaid bills appear tied to the news in Sportico last month that Dapper Labs, the platform for the NBA’s and NFL’s sputtering nonfungible token

The lede: > The unpaid bills appear tied to the news in Sportico last month that Dapper Labs, the platform for the NBA’s and NFL’s sputtering nonfungible tokens, and DraftKings’ Reignmakers NFTs had each engaged the NFLPA to renegotiate their deals in light of the plummeting value of the digital assets. Then came a report this month that Dapper Labs’ NFL NFT was badly missing financial goals. > “OneTeam would have expected around $60 million from Dapper & DraftKings, of that, $41 million would go to the NFLPA,” the person who has been involved in past NFLPA dealings wrote in a direct message. “Now, NFTs are relatively new, so most of the money typically comes from Madden and trading cards.” By that, this person means the bread-and-butter licensing businesses like video games and trading cards at the NFLPA remains healthy. Cryptocurrency is a relatively new category for the unions and has not been a relied-upon source of revenue. Still, this person described the nonpayments of $41.8 million as “horrific.” > Cryptocurrencies like NFTs were all the rage two years ago, skyrocketing in value. Leagues and teams were inking cryptocurrency deals with companies like now-bankrupt FTX, and touting a wide range of NFTs. But crypto crashed along with NFTs, which are essentially authenticated digital duplicates of something real, like a highlight, a trading card or a work of art.