Key Takeaways
first level title
At present, the NFT in the sports industry is still relatively small compared to chain games and artworks. However, as the worlds top ten sports leagues such as NBA, NFL, and FIFA begin to get involved in NFT and Web3-related businesses, NFT related to the sports industry will have growth expectations.
At this stage, the sports industrys cooperation on NFT not only includes traditional routes such as brand outsourcing, card sales, and authorized chain games, but also innovative routes that use superstars as IPs and combine Web3 communities.
Basketball Headz around Curry combines community and generation gameplay. NF3 Basketball will be sold to the public on June 22, 2022 at a price of 0.08 ETH. Additionally, Curry Brand has teamed up with CyberKongz, HAPE, Smiless and Chibi Dinos to launch four IP Serums.
Recently, Curry won the FMVP of the NBA, and many people on Twitter are also teasing, Curry is the first boring ape to win the NBA championship. To some extent, Currys binding to the boring ape is a case of NFTs identity attribute. And this is just a microcosm of a trend. If you zoom in, Curry + NFT actually corresponds to sports industry + Web3 field. This year, with the success of the Olympic Games, the upsurge of the World Cup and the return of most professional leagues, we may usher in an explosive period for the sports industry to enter the Web3 field.
Behind the sports industrys pursuit of new types of diversified changes is an advance layout that complies with the current encryption trend. On the one hand, they hope to establish a deeper emotional connection with fans and change the experience of sports fans. On the other hand, with the development and transformation of digitalization, the sports industry and teams are also looking for new sources of income.
Path 1: Brand Outsourcing + Card Sales (NBA Series)
At present, NBA Top Shot is still one of the most successful cases for the NBA to enter NFT. It focuses on the collection of NBA NFT cards. The content of the cards is mainly the iconic actions of some famous Odaily players. NBA fans can buy them on the platform. , sell, and trade these NFTs. At the same time, the project party is also using NBA resources to promote new NFT business cooperation, such as VIP NFT, star card pack opening and other activities. In addition, the NBA itself is trying more combinations of Web3 (such as: The Association NFT).
Create level consumption scenarios through VIP Pass
The establishment of the VIP NFT business means that customized NFT services have been officially promoted to the sports market, and it also proves that the sports industry has begun to use NFT to create new consumption scenarios of different levels of fans.
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The Association NFT
In addition to the NBA Top Shot released on Flow, NBA officials also opened an NFT-themed Twitter account in March this year, and announced the release of the first batch of NFT products, The Association NFT, on April 20. Different from the collection route of NBA Top Shot, The Association NFT is a product that belongs to Web3 users and focuses on real-time and interactive products. It is deployed on Ethereum and supports secondary transactions on OpenSea.
NBAxNFT first tweet
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NFT display on OpenSea
Like the previous popular Moonbirds, The Association NFT uses NFT variable technology. Each NFT star card will have a change in appearance based on the real performance of the playoffs. There are 24 conditions that trigger card changes, such as lore, three-pointers, etc. The introduction of this mechanism has strengthened With the development attribute of NFT, users can bet on the NFT of their favorite football stars, and then gain appreciation in value, which also greatly enhances the users sense of participation.
The Association NFT is a case of combining the NBA and the mainstream NFT gameplay in the market, but it also exposed some problems, such as loopholes in contract writing and the operation of the Web3 community. Since the combination of NBA and NFT is still mainly based on authorizing project parties and cooperating with outsourcing teams, it is difficult to fully control the team, resulting in NBA Top Shot and The Association NFT. NBA Series NFT for Flow and Ethereum.
Sorare is a football game platform based on blockchain technology and currently supports Ethereum. Players can purchase NFT virtual football star cards that have been certified by football clubs or football leagues on Sorares game platform, and then form their own teams to participate in various football matches on the platform. In addition, the Sorare platform also introduces the classic element drawing cards. Players make profits through the secondary market and auction of NFTs of different rarities.
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Sorare has created an on-chain football manager combined with a real-life brand, and designed a player experience path of opening a card—trading NFT—team competition—obtaining rewards. At the same time, it also strengthens the concept of linking reward and competitiveness, and designs a set of incentive models for players at the top of the rankings, and distributes corresponding benefits, such as gifts, offline tickets, etc., thereby stimulating players to purchase top NFT enhancements team strength.
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player card rarity
Real + virtual business model
Unlike other blockchain games, Sorare has been working commercially with sports organizations, including clubs and leagues. At present, more than 130 European football clubs have launched their own NFTs on the Sorare platform, including well-known European football clubs such as Bayern Munich, Juventus, Real Madrid and Liverpool.
In order to develop more commercial value of NFT, on February 4 this year, Sorare invited developers to create a game for Sorare Legends and retired player cards on Game Jam. This also somewhat maximizes the value of NFTs by creating open APIs and establishing partnerships with other game publishers.
Sorare attracts users by building a football chain game platform, and at the same time vigorously promotes its own NFT trading platform, signs contracts with football sports organizations, and at the same time opens up its own NFT permissions to create a secondary creative atmosphere. In less than two years, the companys valuation Just broke through 1 billion US dollars. However, due to the large amount of interaction requirements based on ETH, Sorare must solve the problems of transaction speed and handling fees. For example, in July last year, it used StarkWare to launch a new expansion solution. For example, it is now actively embracing ZK-rollups. Do not open the problem.
Path Three: Personal Brand + Community Building (Curry Brand)
Combining star activities with Web3
Recently, Under Armors personal brand Curry Brand will launch a cross-community NFT project Basketball Headz. Every time a 3-pointer is scored in the playoffs, mint can unlock 9 free basketball NFTs for a limited time. Such community activities customized according to the characteristics of the stars will mobilize the enthusiasm of fans.
Curry Brand not only attaches community attributes to each activity through Web3, but also rewards loyal fans in the library through NFT. Previously, Curry Brand released Currys co-branded sneakers NFT-Genesis Curry Flow, which is divided into five rarities and supports wearing on Decentraland, The Sandbox, Gala Games and RKL platforms. Curry Brand attracts more cooperation resources through the IP of superstars, creating a sense of belonging and honor for fans. Users who have Genesis Curry Flow can free mint NF3 basketball and combine it with IP Serums to create Basketball Headz exclusive avatar.
Genesis Curry Flow
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In addition to self-built communities, Curry Brand is also preparing to interact with other Web3 communities. For example, in this Basketball Headz, fans get NF3 basketballs by participating in Web3 activities about Curry, and then use community partners (CyberKongz, CyberKongz, HAPE, Chibi Dinos and Smiless) serum NFT to synthesize Basketball Headz, which not only upgrades the gameplay, but also unites the power of different Web3 communities.
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Linkage with other communities
Path 4: Entertainment Ecological Public Chain + Fan DAO
Why ecology + DAO?
Most of the current sports organizations choose to cooperate with various public chains to sell NFT, such as Flow’s NBA, WAX’s MLB, etc., and these all bind their fan traffic to other public chains. If they want to develop other businesses, they will are greatly restricted.
Lets take an example: If the NBA wants to develop themed chain games, is the Flow public chain that we cooperated with before a good choice? Solana and WAX also have performance suitable for blockchain games. If you choose to develop chain games on Solana, then the user experience with Flow may be more separated, resulting in NFTs for buying collectibles are in Flow, NFTs for playing games are in Solana, and NFTs for social avatars are in Ethereum. Of course, at present we have possible solutions such as full-chain and cross-chain, but the problem of fluency between different chains is still unavoidable.
One of the characteristics of the sports industry is that it has a wide range of businesses, many participating roles, and huge resources. If each business is scattered on different chains, it is not a relatively good choice from the perspective of business expansion and economic system construction.
NFT-based sports ecosystem
In reality, the economic volume of sports organizations is very large, and there are many business structures, including: event content, media publicity, financial derivatives, etc. One of the ways that the sports industry can migrate to Web3 as a whole is to create an ecology of its own, which can not only improve User experience, followed by the built-in fan base can also form a closed loop to maximize value.
As can be seen from the ecological map above, the combination of NFT and sports involves various businesses:Electronic tickets and identity verification.
Including traditional event tickets and offline event proofs, the collection value of NFT enables more ways to play tickets, for example: buy three game tickets and airdrop an NFT of star DAO. Bundle individual tickets or season tickets with NFT and turn them into a financial product and investment tool. Reward mechanisms such as new tickets can be obtained by holding high-quality tickets for a long time. This model will price tickets, market liquidity of tickets, and return part of the proceeds to teams and leagues when tickets are resold to create new sources of income for holders, teams, and leagues.Develop chain games based on the public chain.
Issue NFTs for developers, guilds and fans, for example: players hold Pass NFTs to play a series of blockchain games and get in-game bonuses. Each business communicates value through NFT, which greatly improves user experience and creates a closed-loop economy of fan traffic.Fan DAO economy.
Stars can issue their own subDAO on the public chain, and maintain DAO through NFT verification and token incentives, which can make fans and stars communicate more directly, and at the same time increase their own income. Under the DAO gameplay, the role of fans may be further developed. Socios, for example, offers fans more than fans. By purchasing tokens, fans can obtain the governance rights guaranteed by DAO, and can vote to decide how to name the training ground or which song to play in the game after scoring a goal, etc., although the more core team functions have not yet been delegated, But its also worth looking forward to.The media in the sports industry produces a large amount of content, which can be recorded through NFT and called and displayed in the public chain ecology.
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