SBF contacts Taylor Swift for a deal months prior to the FTX crash

In the months leading up to FTX’s collapse, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, had approached Taylor Swift to work out a lucrative sponsorship deal estimated to be worth over $100 million.

According to the Financial Times, the meeting revolved around ticketing arrangements for NFTs related to the pop star.

However, Swift eventually backed out from the agreement prior to FTX’s financial troubles.

Sources have claimed that FTX’s unorthodox internal decision-making, internal disputes among Bankman-Fried’s team, and the hiring of external executives may have all contributed to the downfall of the deal.

At first, Bankman-Fried and Claire Watanabe, a senior executive in FTX’s development team, had favored the expensive deal, yet several members of the marketing team opposed it, citing past celebrity deals that failed to bring monetary value.

Ultimately, Brett Harrison, FTX’s US president, and other senior executives convinced FTX’s founder to cancel the deal.

Despite this, FTX had already signed agreements with Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Osaka, Shaquille O’Neal and Steph Curry, which brought their names into the spotlight when the crypto exchange declared bankruptcy.

This has sparked an investigation from US regulators to identify the reasons for FTX’s downfall.