Is the NFL’s Latest Move to Web3 More Than Just a Gimmick?
With the new NFL season now underway, multiple NFTs related to American football are starting to pop up; and while NFTs have received harsh criticism since their entrance into the mainstream at the beginning of 2021, they have received a lot of continuing interest from athletes and investors alike within the world of sports because of the blockchain’s ability to create a new set of sports memorabilia and collectibles.
NFL ALL Day
The NFL All Day NFT collection will follow along the regular football season with a variety of intersections with the actual sport. The collection also boasts a series of challenges as well to further encourage fans to collect new tokens.
Editions
One interesting aspect of the new project is how the NFL is creating editions into their tokens. The concept of editions is not new in NFTs, however, it has yet to catch on successfully with a project because unique traits play such a vital role in most NFT collections.
The concept of editions is neat, but it is unlikely that NFT traders will pay a higher price for a token that is identical to another in all facets besides the edition.Roster challenges
The token’s utility hints at creating a collection of players which resembles a team’s roster similar to fantasy sports rosters and Madden Ultimate Team. According to their website, by completing these challenges and gathering a position-based collection, fans will earn rewards towards upcoming packs and tokens over a series of drops, but it’s hard to see the appeal of this utility which feels more like a cash grab than anything else.Centralization
Oddly though, the tokens are all priced in USD and sold in fiat which complicates the process of buying and holding NFTs. This requires users to sign up to a centralized web2 database which contravenes the value of decentralization.
One of the unique features of NFTs is how it allows anyone to interact with tokens and coins globally. However, by requiring fiat to mint and purchase these tokens, the NFL is restricting users only with US bank accounts.
NFL Rivals Game
Along with the NFL All Day project, there is another NFL collection called Rivals which will include Arcade Football style gameplay for holders to enjoy with their NFTs.
Although the gameplay has not been revealed yet, it is good to see another project adapting GameFi in the blockchain.; and it looks to be a much more interesting project than the All Day collection with limited use of blockchain technology.
Continued interest in sports
Although NFL All Day appears like little more than a publicity gimmick, it still shows a clear interest in web3 among sports media, athletes, and businesses. The potential for sports memorabilia and collecting is substantial, but the tokens themselves have to be more than just cash grabs.
If large markets teams want to start providing web3 products to their fans, utilities should be more beneficial to the holders, such as tickets, streaming subscriptions, or something similar. As it stands, fan economy has great potential, but creating tokens with old highlights for fiat isn’t going to appeal to the wider web3 world.
