Imagine that your sports business can increase fan engagement with just a few clicks. Diverse industries are using blockchain and we all know how blockchain-enabled innovations are increasing day by day.
Talking about sports, fan engagement drives the sports industry. Fan tokens and sports NFT are used in the industry to enhance fan engagement. The overall engagement is improved via collectibles or voting mechanisms. This has also made changes in the ticket collections.
The process is further streamlined by using smart contracts. The dynamic ticket pricing and resales will also become better. According to Deloitte’s study, NFT can merge the real and the virtual world. There are over $2 billion transactions only for sports NFT. Blockchain has the power to scale the sports NFT industry by providing security and transparency and by utilizing the crypto token economy to form new revenue streams.
The technology can be useful to empower athletes by automating contract payments and giving players and industries more sports NFT marketplace, and reduction in transaction costs. In this blog, we will learn how blockchain benefits sports companies — various offerings by blockchain in sports, such as sports NFT and finally, the factors affecting blockchain deployment for NFT sports collectibles.
How Blockchain is beneficial for sports companies
During the pandemic in 2020, there were moments of despair for the sports industry as none of the matches was being held due to lockdown. Even when the lockdown was lifted worldwide, fans were hesitant to attend any of the tournaments.
During this time, sports companies were looking forward to various ways to start the tournaments and attract fans as well. One such way is blockchain; by using the technology, there was an improvement in fan engagement and eliminated fraud in the ticketing system.
The integration of blockchain with sports has also been lucrative for investors. The investors, sponsors, team management agencies, and players are linked on a single platform due to blockchain. There are also smart contracts that make the transaction process easier. The prize money & the media rights all of that are handled on one platform. With the payments distributed fairly, the trust between players and organizations doubles.
Other than handling sponsorships, the blockchain will also simplify the broadcasting rights of the tournaments. The tracking of the licenses will become hassle-free. A unique blockchain-powered digital identity can be helpful to generate a unique ID for every owner of the broadcasting rights to remove any confusion.
About mainstream NFT Sport Collectibles
Let’s understand more about the sports NFTs. An NFT or a Non Fungible Token can be an artwork, a tokenized trading sports NFT card, or any other type of digital collectible. The sports NFTs are mostly part of a club for which the owner of the NFT can become a member. NBA Top Shot is one of the examples of sports NFT.
Earlier there were physical trading cards now they are being digitized in the form of NFT sports cards. The sport NFT memorabilia can also be traded further. There will be a 202% growth in NFT and sports memorabilia by 2032. The sports industry is definitely going to see a massive profit from NFT in sports collectibles.
Alex Sumsky, founder of Basketball Forever, agrees with Deloitte’s findings and believes that NFT is more than just a token strapped to a JPEG and provides cutting-edge ways to improve user engagement.
The collectibles are powered by NFTs thus making them completely unique and their verification will occur by the immutable blockchain technology. The use of sports NFT tokens caters to the younger generation of sports audiences.
Fan Loyalty & Engagement Platforms
You must have heard of traditional fan engagement tactics used by the sports industry to attract fans. Although, now many sports teams are becoming global day by day. By using blockchain, fan loyalty can be increased by providing real-time payouts. The fans can be offered tokens which they can use for purchasing team-related goods.
The sports company can let their fans register on the app. After the registration, the fans will be rewarded with sports NFT tokens. Moreover, these tokens will provide discounts, in-stadium merchandise, and earn more tokens as well. Sports organizations can easily use distributed ledger technology to welcome an international fan base.
Blockchain-Based Ticketing System
Tickets are always prone to fraud, intermediaries, counterfeiting, etc. Thus using blockchain technology for ticketing, the tracking of NFT sports tickets becomes easy due to the shared database. Sports Associations can sell tickets using a blockchain-enabled mobile app for iOS and Android.
To counter-check the authenticity of the tickets, the blockchain-based distribution system can be combined with the Bluetooth devices at the stadium entrance. The reselling of the ticket is eliminated as all the transactions are shared on the blockchain database.
Fan tokens
The fan tokens or sports NFT crypto are digital assets that enable fans to connect with — clubs, leagues, sports teams, associations, and players. Owing sports NFT tokens give the fans access to fan-related membership perks. Fans who own tokens can join sports clubs, merchandise, rewards, and many more. These tokens differ from Ethereum, or bitcoin or any other mainstream tokens. The tokens are exclusive to earning sports-related benefits only.
The working of the tokens can be understood as if fans are buying the digital tokens and trading them with other sports goodies. As a seller, your job is to set the token’s price. However, the charges can also differ according to the market. The tokens are also a way to express loyalty to your preferred teams.
Decentralized Esports Ecosystems
ESports is also a domain in the sports industry whose potential is still untapped. For several years, the gaming or the esports industry was also dominated by centralized companies. So to remove the centralization the concept of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) was integrated into esports.
The bottom-up approach method is used to make the decision here. The bottom-up approach means the community is responsible for all the decisions rather than a CEO. Aligning the blockchain with esports enables the users’ proof of ownership and transparency. You and the other community can set the rules of the game as well as earn during play. The decisions are taken by the voting mechanisms through governance tokens. Further, the smart contracts facilitate the governance tokens.
Factors Affecting Deployment of Blockchain in Sports NFT Collectibles
Implementing new standards
There are certain challenges in implementing the blockchain in the sports NFT industry. There is a lack of clarity regarding the regulations the existing frameworks are unable to keep up with the new changes. The countries can draw a regulatory framework to make people take the technology seriously. Further, a good framework will also remove the bad actors or scammers.
Tax implications
With exponential growth in the blockchain and sports NFT crypto, tax implications are increasing around the world. But the blockchain experts are also saying in reality the taxes will reduce. The blockchain can — track VAT, and multinational company taxes. Giving authorities more confidence in data handling. Mainly the reason for the complication is a lack of awareness which will improve with time.
Educating fans
It is difficult to educate fans, although not completely impossible. As the companies opting for blockchain can explain its working to their consumers by churning out dedicated content regarding “what are NFTs in sports” or “where to buy sport NFT” on their social media platforms. Further, no-code blockchain platforms are worthy of investing currently. Sports organizations can choose a no-code blockchain platform that will be easy to understand and deploy a sport NFT marketplace for themselves.
Wrapping Up
Sports industries employing blockchain to build sports NFT marketplace are unlocking better ROI for sponsors, improving fan engagement, and deciphering more revenue streams for their organizations. The transparency has also given a diverse & dedicated fanbase.
Honestly, we have just scratched the surface. With a bit more public awareness, blockchain will definitely take the sports industry beyond sports NFT cards and crypto. The blockchain community is working diligently to address the issues that the sports NFT and collectibles industry is currently facing.
Partner with Zeeve
Zeeve is the leading blockchain infrastructure management platform. We can provide tailored solutions according to any NFT sports industry. Our blockchain solutions will easily integrate with your existing systems if you wish to start an NFT sports marketplace development.
Our platform is cloud-agnostic and assists various Blockchain protocols with advanced analytics and monitoring of nodes and networks.
We feature a robust set of APIs to build DApps for a range of applications across industries, including asset tokenization, and sports NFTs. Let’s connect to start your NFT dApp project with the help of our experts.
