Today is a monumental day in the world of Sports. Super Bowl Sunday. Get ready to have Cheeto-covered fingerprints all over your couch and ring marks on your coffee table, seeing as no one knows how to use coasters for some reason. Due to today's special occasion, and the research that claims NFTs in sports media will generate over 2 Billion dollars in transactions this year, I wanted to share with you how the disruptive innovations of Non-Fungible-Tokens are colliding with the industry of Sports.
NBA Top Shot
Launching in October of 2020, NBA Top Shot was the first huge success story for Sports collectibles turning the corner into the digital era. Top Shot is now just one of many entities that mint Digital Collectible Trading Cards, which take iconic images and videos of Basketball stars and shape them into a 3-Dimensional virtual object. No more weathered slices of cardboard that slowly disintegrate if you keep them in the sun too long. Granted, there is something to be said about the nostalgic experience one has with tangible collectibles, and I’m not saying that we should give up that haptic experience; that’s something I believe humans will always cherish. However, we now have the technology which allows us to buy and keep our collectibles over the internet, adapting to any device we have, where you can authenticate that it’s an original, while also making it easier than ever to resell it on digital marketplaces. No more paying for a Derek Jeter 1998 Gold Card on Ebay, only to realize it’s a fake made at a Kinkos.
NFT Tickets
Digital Trading cards are cool and shiny, but they’re really just the tip of the NFT Utility Iceberg. Blockchain technology, which has immutable smart-contracts that programmatically trigger certain actions, has the potential to completely change the way we interact with our favorite sports teams, players, and venues. Re-read that last sentence…took me 5 minutes just to get the grammar right, but it really boils down to the magic going on behind the curtain. One way in which NFTs are entering the realm of sports is through Tickets. Sports Venues, as well as any other event spaces which require a ticket to be admitted, can use NFT tech to prevent fake ticket sales “bots” from buying up a huge amount of tickets only to resell them on the secondary market for profit. And if they are fairly resold on the secondary market, you can track the history of the ticket to make sure it’s legit. No more scalpers selling you copy & paste tickets. With NFT tickets which can have some dope 3-dimensional visual art on them, customers now have something they can keep in their digital wallet forever, rather than a boring QR code or piece of paper that gets thrown in the trash. NFT tickets are also great for the event organizers, giving them new revenue opportunities by using the tickets that have programmed perks like deals on merchandise and concessions, or meet and greets with players. Oh and by the way, everyone who’s attending the Super Bowl today is getting a commemorative NFT ticket stub.
Sorare
Another amazing advancement in this space is the lovechild of Fantasy sports and Blockchain technology. Similar to Fantasy Football, a platform named Sorare allows you to pick certain soccer players on your team, with their real-world statistics directly correlating to your team's point production. The difference here is that each “Player Card” that you own, is a digital asset that can then be traded or sold on a marketplace for cryptocurrency. And what’s even wilder, by winning matches against other players from around the globe, you can actually win more money in Ether. With our electronic devices so happily giving us shorter attention spans, people are now forming innovative ways in which we interact with sports. Now on the flip side, we’ll definitely have to keep an eye on how this business model turns out, because as fun as it seems, we don’t want 14 year old’s taking cash out of their parents' dresser due to the fantasy sports gambling addiction they acquired. Only time will tell how technology will advance. All we can hope for is that it develops in a direction that aligns with the good we hold in our hearts.
Stay Curious!
P.S The Foo Fighters are supposedly performing in the “Metaverse” after the game.
~NFT Art Source
Article by: Nate Galper
How Sports NFTs Can Generate Over $2B in 2022