NFTs have provided a huge landscape for many industries to expand their market beyond their conventional settings. While many industries are slowly boarding the NFT bandwagon, the gaming and sports industry was the quick ones to adopt this innovation.  Let’s look at the evolution that has come about in the Sports NFT space or future of NFT in sports industry.

What Are Sports NFT?

Sports NFTs are unique NFTs themed on sports, with immutable records stored on the blockchain, a digital ledger. Thus, most of the NFTs in sports are digital souvenirs, trading cards featuring famous sports stars, etc. Sports NFTs also come as photos, video clips of iconic moments in the history of sports, or even audio clips of the famous speech, commentary, etc. Sports NFTs provide many benefits for the sport, sportsmen, and the audience. The players can create a unique digital identity for themselves. If we take the fans, they not only get to own the unique digital assets of their favorite sports star but also these NFTs can help enhance the fans’ experiences. 

It’s a well-known fact that most sports thrive on the support of their fans. Hence, the players must constantly reciprocate the love and support the fans give them by collaborating with brands, etc. Thus, NFTs are a great means to give back to the fans. 

Let’s look at some of the use cases of the sports industry to understand how they contribute to the fans’ experiences. 

  • Digital Collectibles 

Sports collectibles are famous among Sports NFTs. This is because, the fans get to own iconic moments, cards, etc. Imagine owning your favorite sports star’s most iconic moment in his career. Doesn’t it sound interesting? 

NBA topshots is a popular Basketball Collectible platform that harnesses blockchain technology to make conventional sports trading cards digital. It is an NFT marketplace that lets the fans trade iconic moments of legendary players of the NBA. 

  • Access Tokens

If we look beyond digital collectibles, NFTs can also be integrated with live sports. For example, fans who are ready to pay for an NFT can be provided with access to exclusive rare videos from archives, like cricket commentary, videos of players having conversations behind the field, etc. 

  • Gaming

NFTs can be used in sports-based games as well. For example, let’s take Jump.trade. It is a gaming NFT marketplace with World’s first P2E Cricket NFTs. The NFT holders can be part of the World’s First Cricket NFT game- ‘Meta Cricket League’. 

Now that we have discussed the use cases and more, it’s time to look into what the future holds for the Sports NFT space. 

The Introduction Of Web 3.0

From the participative social web, Web 2.0, we have moved on to Web 3.0. To be precise, Web 3.0 is the third generation of internet services for websites and applications where data can be interconnected in a decentralized manner. The main aim of Web 3.0 is to provide a decentralized platform to the people, where they feel complete ownership of their creations and have a gratifying experience with appropriate rewards for their time and data. A part of the internet has always been owned by a small group of companies, and technological developments such as storage based on a blockchain system have opened different possibilities for various industries. The sports industry is no exception. 

Decentralized And Inclusive 

If we look at the whole functioning of the sports industry it is quite clear that it is centralized. A board of directors and executives takes the major decisions. While this system is not entirely erratic, the community has a minimal role in decision-making. So much so that, the decision will be completely against the community’s expectations. Fans are the heartbeat of the sports industry. Not including the community in decision-making would be completely unfair to them. Just because the fans are at the bottom of the pyramid does not mean that their opinions don’t matter. 

DAOs In The Sports Industry 

  • What if a collective group of people could own or invest in an organization and have a voice for themselves in every decision? Today many sports teams and managed as publicly traded companies, so it might be conducive for the group of fans organized under a DAO to get shares. 
  • The DAO teams have to make a part of their capital through tokens, created on their own blockchain.
  • Every person investing in the organization. teams would have to make a part of their capital available through tokens, created on their blockchain agreement. Every person buying would financially invest in the organization, and each token’s value would be marked on the club’s financial health. 
  •  A part of the generated revenues could be virtually stored in a virtual treasury that would help with the development of new projects as well as the daily functions of the organization.

Closing Thoughts

NFTs are no longer alienated from any of the industries. Most industries have been able to seamlessly integrate NFTs with their services. The wide range of NFT applications in the sports industry. Though sports NFTs are often associated with their conventional use cases, their potential goes far beyond just collectibles.

Read more: What Really is the Long run of the NFT Marketplace?

By Anil kondla

Anil is an enthusiastic, self-motivated, reliable person who is a Technology evangelist. He's always been fascinated at work especially at innovation that causes benefit to the students, working professionals or the companies. Being unique and thinking Innovative is what he loves the most, supporting his thoughts he will be ahead for any change valuing social responsibility with a reprising innovation. His interest in various fields and the urge to explore, led him to find places to put himself to work and design things than just learning.

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