In “Love Story,” one of Taylor Swift’s most popular songs, the celebrity croons the following to her lover right before the track’s chorus: “I was begging you, please don’t go.”
That sentiment is perhaps a more accurate depiction of the pop star’s team’s mood after an endorsement deal broke down between Swift, who was previously said to wield a nuanced understanding of U.S. securities law, and the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, according to a new report from the New York Times.
In 2022, after more than six months of negotiations, Swift’s team signed a sponsorship deal with the now-bankrupt crypto exchange worth north of $100 million, per a previous report from the Financial Times. But right before FTX signed, Bankman-Fried pulled out, according to the New York Times.
Taylor Swift’s team was reportedly “frustrated and disappointed.” A representative for the pop star did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
In April, Adam Moskowitz, a lawyer in Florida who’s gained attention for lawsuits he and famed lawyer David Boies have filed against crypto companies and celebrity endorsers, said on a podcast that Swift and her team had done due diligence on FTX to see if the exchange was selling unregistered securities—a key legal underpinning of his and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuits against high-profile crypto firms and their endorsers.
A series of headlines soon touted the celebrity’s expertise in securities law, pointing out that her financial acumen may have come from her father, who had worked at Merrill Lynch.
However, Moskowitz, in an interview with the New York Times, said that he had no inside insight into the negotiations between Swift’s team and Bankman-Fried’s exchange.
In addition to new details regarding Taylor Swift’s deal with FTX, the paper of record also reported the previously undisclosed size of the endorsement deal between the exchange and football star Tom Brady and his former wife, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
Brady was paid $30 million, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. And Bündchen netted $18 million, per one source. Both payouts were almost all in equity, and the celebrities saw those tens of millions evaporate just days after FTX crumbled in November.
