In the last two weeks of 2021, Snoop Dogg and Eminem — two of the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show’s headliners bought Bored Apes and updated their Twitter profile pictures accordingly.

Snoop’s announcement came first, tweeting on 12/21: “When I APE in I APE all the way in!!”

Eminem’s purchase followed a little over a week later, paying 123.45 ETH (~$452K) for Bored Ape #9055.

Neither rappers are new to the Metaverse, with the D-O-Double-G controversially claiming to be the man behind the NFT Whale Twitter account @cozomomedici in September, which is connected to a wallet with an estimated $11.82M in NFTs (including 10 CryptoPunks).

Eminem owns 331 NFTs according to DappRadar, with this BAYC a long time coming. The Ape, which carries an uncanny resemblance to Slim Shady, was Tweeted about back in November by @Gee__Gazza: “I still think @Eminem is destined to buy my @BoredApeYC one day.”

Before 2021 came to a close, the sale was a done deal.

With the Super Bowl losing its grip on key youth demographics — falling from over 52M viewers between the ages of 18-49 in 2011 to 34.3M in 2021 — the opportunity for two of the rap game’s biggest stars to display their Apes on the world’s most-watched jumbotron could be a tipping point for BAYC and NFTs in general.

After spending a year largely restrained to a small portion of the young adult population, Super Bowl LVI may be the moment we look back on as bringing NFTs from the wallets of young early-adopters to the living rooms of 10s of millions of potential new consumers.

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