Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard something about NFTs in recent weeks, as they've become a pretty big deal. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey put one on sale earlier this month, and the highest bid quickly reached $2.5M. He sold his first-ever tweet - incidentally THE first-ever tweet, published in 2006 by himself. It says: "just setting up my twttr".
How do you sell a tweet? Put it on the Ethereum blockchain, and now it's an NFT - non-fungible token. It's a digital asset with a unique ID that makes the asset one of a kind and non-interchangeable. No one can change, replace or delete an NFT in any way. If it's yours, it's yours forever, unless you decide to sell it. There are platforms like OpenSea or Nifty Gateway to buy and sell NFTs. A short video clip by digital artist Beeple was initially bought for $67,000 and then resold for $6.6 million in this way. The total amount of NFT sales exceeds $100 million per month, with celebrities like Canadian artist Grimes getting their piece of the pie.
Sports and eSports also contribute to the NFT boom, and the potential for further NFT adoption in these fields is massive.
NFTs and the NBA
Some of the most famous NFTs are collectible digital cats from the CryptoKitties game developed by Dapper Labs. This blockchain company has also helped to bring NFTs into sports. In partnership with the NBA, it launched NBA Top Shot, a marketplace for NFTs which are basically short highlights featuring star basketball players. These NFTs come in packs with several levels of rarity, and they can also be bought or sold on the marketplace. The total worth of Top Shot sales is now around $250 million, with the NBA earning a share of this revenue just by providing its license.
NFTs and eSports
One of the most decorated eSports organizations, NAVI, is the first to embrace NFTs in its field. At first glance, NAVI's business model is pretty similar to the NBA one. The club partnered with DMarket, a platform for in-game items and NFTs, and now NAVI's NFT collectibles are sold in packs and traded on dmarket.com. The most expensive piece of this eSports memorabilia was sold for $100,000. NAVI gets its cut from every trade.
What's different about this when compared to NBA Top Shot? NAVI doesn't just sell NFTs to fans, the club also rewards and engages them through NAVINATION. a project based on DMarket's drop.gg technology. Fans get free NFT drops while watching Twitch streams letting them craft even more valuable collectibles from these drops. They also receive experience points for drops, crafts or other challenges and compete for additional prizes in weekly and seasonal tournaments. They also buy NFT within pack sales.
NFTs and Tiger Woods
It's not only organizations and clubs that are able to make big money on NFTs. Like other celebrities, famous athletes are perfectly capable of capitalizing on this trend. Tiger Woods has always been good at making money both on and off the golf course. Now, an NFT collection of his iconic moments is for sale on OpenSea, the platform where NAVINATION collectibles are also soon expected. There are even rumors about Tiger Woods' collaboration with NAVI on NFTs.
The NBA, NAVI and Tiger Woods are the first in sports and eSports to jump on the NFT bandwagon, but surely not the last. We should just wait and see who'll be next.
