2022 is the year of sports NFT?
2022 is the year of sports NFT?
Sports NFT of the year
Trading cards make sense for the average person, and fantasy sports make sense for the average person. Sports NFT is the logical next extension.
Content points.
- Sports NFT It's a cross between sports cards and fantasy sports (fantasy sports).
- There is a $30 billion market opportunity for existing fantasy/sports card players.
- Sports NFT brings an exciting value proposition to fans and teams compared to traditional systems.
- Compared to traditional cryptocurrencies, the existingPlatformforUserprovides easier access and opens up the possibility of bringing in hundreds of millions of users.
- Top Shot and Sorare were the first movers, but NFL All Day and FanCraze (cricket) are joining the race and will further accelerate the growth of the industry.
- Deloitte estimates that $2 billion in revenue will come from sports NFT this year alone.
Anyone entering the cryptocurrency space understands that operating in its current form is a rather confusing experience, with users often having to jump through hoops for hours before they can actually complete a series of operations.
You have to buy your cryptocurrency on an exchange, download and set up a wallet, send the cryptocurrency to that wallet, find a marketplace or exchange to trade on, complete a transaction, and track it on the local block explorer. Oh, and now you want to join another cryptocurrency ecosystem? Great, you'll have to do it all over again.
For these complex reasons, only 300 million people (or < 4% of the world's population) are using cryptocurrencies at this stage. If the industry wants more people to adopt, it must 1) provide a compelling value proposition and 2) make cryptocurrencies easier to understand or abstract out the back end so users can simply operate and get started easily.
Sports NFT gets both of these things right.
Teams have a large and passionate fan base that is willing to spend time and money for their team. Sports NFT provides a profitable way for fans to take an interest in a player or team. The emerging sports NFT platform is focused on making the onboarding experience as simple as a few clicks. So, how big is this opportunity for the cryptocurrency space and what kind of impact will it have?
Market Opportunities
For decades, fans have used trading cards to further their involvement with their favorite teams and to invest in their on-field icons. When fans buy a rookie card, it means they have a vested interest in how that player will perform over the next decade. Trading cards allow fans to gain some financial interest in the game.
Sports card collecting was very popular for much of the 20th century, but interest in sports cards stalled as the supply of cards increased, card manufacturers gradually fragmented and interest shifted more online. However, beginning in the third quarter of 2020, sports cards staged an intense comeback that underscored the renewed interest of fans to get involved.
Single cards of players such as Tom Brady and Michael Jordan have sold for $2 million or more in value. Today, sports cards are a roughly $14 billion industry, and their annual growth rate exceeds 20%.
With the rise of the Internet, fans have found more ways to drive their passion for participation. Some programs were designed so that fans could draft players to form their own teams that would compete against their friends based on their players' on-field results, and fantasy sports was born.
Today, fantasy sports is a $22 billion market and is growing at a rate of 9.5% per year. There are more than 60 million players in the U.S. and Canada alone, and they are primarily focused on baseball and football. Outside the U.S., more than 100 million people play fantasy cricket and 8 million play fantasy soccer.
The advent of daily fantasy sports has further increased user adoption and intensity. DraftKings alone has 2 million monthly active users (up approximately 25% from a year ago) who each spend nearly $100 per month - that's $2.4 billion a year.
Sports NFT is at the intersection of trading cards and fantasy sports. This new marketplace of traceable addresses brings in hundreds of millions of engaged users who spend tens of billions of dollars annually.
How blockchain and NFT come together
Sports NFTs are tradable collectibles on the blockchain. Because they are on the blockchain, their scarcity is demonstrable. The most popular model currently allows users to acquire player cards through the marketplace or by purchasing "packs", where each pack is randomly assigned 3-5 cards.
These cards can then be held, wagered on for future appreciation, or used in games or challenges to win rewards. Cards have different rarity values depending on how many exist. The rarer they are, the more valuable they are, or the more useful they are in the game.NBA Top Shot (basketball) and Sorare (soccer) are by far the two most popular platforms.
These sports NFT platforms look and feel more like eBay than Uniswap. yes, you operate these platforms on the blockchain, but the operation is silky smooth. the head of platform products at NBA Top Shot says, "over time we can teach you and we can get you into the cryptocurrency space.
But if I put the cumbersome operation of cryptocurrency in front of you at the beginning, then we will definitely lose". Users don't have to worry about wallets or helper words, they can forget about gas fees, the only thing they need to worry about is the cost of their own credit card. In addition, hackers do not exist on these platforms. Sports NFT greatly simplifies the hands-on experience for users, who only have to worry about the sports side of things.
Currently the most popular platform for users and sales is NBA Top Shot, created by Dapper Labs, creators of the famous NFT project CryptoKitties, and launching in the summer of 2020, Dapper has built their own blockchain, called Flow, which supports not only Top Shot but also a growing number of other networks including NFL All Day, La Liga (La Liga), UFC Strike and Cricket's FanCraze. It also supports a growing number of other gaming networks, including NFL All Day, La Liga (La Liga), UFC Strike, and cricket's FanCraze.
While Sorare usually provides a card for each player, Dapper's product has "Moments" of a team or player's specific game. These are short video highlights of a player. For example, there can be multiple Tom Brady highlights per season. This introduces an interesting supply and demand dynamic. Should a moment be produced for each game? Once a week? Dapper is still working on the supply and demand dynamics and has even introduced a destruction mechanism to help eliminate some of the supply.
Sports The fantasy sports side of NFT is still in its early stages. sorare has weekly games where players can build teams using their cards and earn points based on their players' performance on the court. Real prizes are awarded to the winners of these contests. nba Top Shot promises a similar fantasy gaming experience, but has yet to deliver. Third-party sites and even DAOs have sprung up to try to fill the void.
Until now, Top Shot Moments have only been somewhat useful when performing nightly "challenges". In order to complete these challenges, fantasy players must have certain moments in which the player in question achieves a specific goal that night. As a result of completing these challenges, more "moments" will be rewarded.
For example, if you have the top five players with the most rebounds on the night at the moment, you'll be rewarded. Offerings for cricket, the NFL, UFC and La Liga have only just launched, but there are signs that the fantasy sports side will be at the top of the list.
Value proposition for fans
More participatory
Sports NFT offers a new way for fans to experience the game. They are able to actively participate in the success of the players they buy. Traditionally, fans have only cared about their hometown team. Sports betting, sports cards and fantasy sports push the focus from the hometown team to any team or player you are interested in. Fans can now have more reasons to actively support a team or player on the other side of the country or world.
Fans can also get in touch with their favorite players directly, as these players are also playing virtual games with them. Numerous players are also avid collectors. They even talk about it on the court. Rudy Gobert recently dunked on Josh Hart, and Gobert was heard on the microphone saying, "It's going to be a good Top Shot moment." No word on whether Hart (an avid Top Shot collector) agrees with the idea.
Profit opportunities
Entry prices for cards start at a few dollars and go all the way up to six figures. Players have the opportunity to acquire rare cards through the packaging system, which levels the playing field for everyone. Players can purchase unknown rookie cards that they think have potential. Or, if they think Cristiano Ronaldo has a good game this week, they can go out and buy his card, have him join their Solari team, and hopefully win some cash. Sports NFT is like a stock market for players. The value of different cards changes daily, based on the player's performance and chances on the field.
Real practicality
Sports NFTs can have great crossover value in the real world. With all the Toronto Raptors NFTs on Top Shot, maybe you've been airdropped some tickets to an upcoming game. Get into Chiefs stadium for the game while you have Patrick Mahomes' all-day moment? Maybe you'll get a free meet and greet after the game. That's the next evolution of fan status: provable fan status.
Eight people with Top Shot moments of Suns players were recently invited to the NBA Finals and another eight were invited to the 2021 NBA Draft. Thanks to their Top Shot collections, fans were able to interact directly with the players. You likely didn't bring your LeBron James rookie card to the game, but you did get to use your phone to show that you have his moment.
It's NBADraft Day and our collectors are starting to shoot face to face with @obitoppin1 and @Eisenberg43
No off-season
Star quarterback Russell Wilson was recently traded to the Denver Broncos. Speculators loved the landing spot and immediately started buying his NFL All Day moment, sending its price soaring by 25%. The price of player cards for his new team also doubled. There is no offseason, even when the players are not on the field.
More secure than physical cards
We've all heard the stories of people who had a Mickey Mantle rookie card or a rare Pokemon card, only to have their parents get rid of it along with other "toys". Sports NFT avoids similar mishaps. All major sports NFT platforms require a phone number and email address to ensure that you are never locked out of your account. While this sacrifices decentralization, most users are currently more interested in the sports aspect of NFT than the economic principles of cryptocurrency.
Supply is detectable
One huge problem with printed sports cards is that there is an oversupply of them. In the 1990s, multiple vendors owned the rights to print cards for each league and saturated the market. Vendors were printing as many cards as possible in a grab for cash. On the other hand, sports NFTs themselves were scarce because they were licensed to the official supplier of each league. dapper controlled these licenses for the NBA, NFL, UFC, La Liga and other leagues.
Even the single-vendor model had supply issues; NBA Top Shot faced a backlash in 2021 when it increased the number of "mint" new moments from 1,000 to 60,000 per highlight moment. Since they had full control over this variable, Dapper was able to quickly adjust and implement "destruction" and trading mechanisms to reduce supply.
Market Turning Point
Sorare and Top Shot have only been around for a few years. Their promotion has been measured and they have invested in limited marketing so far. So far, Sorare and Top Shot adoption has been organic, so adoption as a whole has been fairly slow and steady. top Shot's initial popularity was largely due to speculation, but in general, the two oldest platforms have appreciated at a gradual rate. top Shot is still officially in beta.
What gives us confidence now that we're seeing accelerated user adoption? In short: NFL All Day and FanCraze.
NFL All Day
In North America, the demand for football is limitless. Of the 60 million North American fantasy players mentioned earlier, 40 million play fantasy football. Fantasy football is four times more popular than fantasy basketball. So if Top Shot has over 1 million subscribers, based on these trends, NFL All Day should have over 4 million subscribers.
Most of these fans earn well above the average salary in the United States. This group spends more than the average consumer on everything from food and drink to apparel. This group is willing to spend their disposable income on their passions. NFL All Day has proven to be no different in its short history.
The NFL All Day Marketplace was launched in late February of this year. Despite being in a restricted closed beta phase, it reached the sales volume in one month that Sorare reached in month 22 and Top Shot in month 7. Approximately half of the NFL All Day subscribers currently registered on the platform have made a purchase on the marketplace in the past month.
This is five times the activity of NBA Top Shot users. Monthly independent (unique) buyers are already nearing the best month in SoRare's three years of existence. For those unfamiliar with the NFL, it's the off-season for football, which makes these numbers even more impressive.
Considering the level of engagement in the closed beta, and the overall popularity of fantasy football, NFL All Day seems like a good bet to have thousands of users join the platform as we approach the 2022 season.
FanCraze
The NFL All Day story is nearly complete thanks to football fan frenzy, and the FanCraze story is still in the works; but its user base remains very solid.
FanCraze is the world's largest cricket administrator - it is also the official NFT partner of the International Cricket Council. the FanCraze marketplace was launched in January this year and currently has some seemingly strong trading volumes. While there are no current public aggregations of the statistics, the blockchain data shows us that there is about one transaction happening every minute: the current maximum for the network. Multiple NFT moments have been sold at five-figure prices.
FanCraze recently raised $100 million in their Series A funding round, which should drive further investment. This Series A round follows a $17.4 million seed round led by Tiger Global Management in 2021. The opportunity for existing fantasy platforms to expand into NFT is also attracting capital. Popular platform Dream 11 is investing in cricket NFT platform Rario. FTX is in talks with the Mobile Premier League (MPL) for the launch of the platform.
If only a small percentage of the 100 million fantasy cricket players decide to explore FanCraze and these other platforms, we could see a huge number of new users joining the cryptocurrency space.
Investment Opportunities
Token Investment
Sorare runs on ethereum. Therefore, unless you are a venture capitalist, you do not have direct access to the platform. dapper's products run on the Flow blockchain, which gives users access to all of the products in its ecosystem. Flow tokens had an impressive run-up in 2021 as Top Shot heated up, but its token price dropped sharply as the ecosystem stabilized.
Flow's supply plan certainly didn't help the price, as about 300 million tokens (about 30% of the fully diluted supply) were unlocked later this year. With another 250+ million tokens unlocked, 2022 looks to be another tough year.
Still, the activity on Flow is impressive. In some periods, the platform has even had more users than the Ether network.
Time/Card Investment
The single biggest way to profit in traditional sports cards, fantasy sports or sports NFT is simply to find and own the best players before everyone else catches up. An easy way to invest in sports NFT is to buy the first cards/moments of players with high potential (similar to the "rookie" cards of sports cards) each year and hold on to them.
If the market follows the trend of Top Shot, we can also see opportunities for individual moments of upside. For example, the first moment is series 1, later moments are series 2, series 3, etc. The cheapest Series 1 Top Shot common (least rare) moment is currently $22, and the cheapest Series 1 NFL All Day moment is priced at $4.
Compared to Top Shot, NFL All Day has about 2 times as many moments in the first series. If you control for supply variables, All Day moments seem like a pretty good cheap option. On FanCraze, the cheapest moments are about $6, which suggests that supply will be similar to NBA Top Shot's series 1. A simple buy-and-hold strategy for these early moments could yield some simple dividends.
More advanced strategies include buying and selling around a player's major performances, trades or other inflection points in that player's career. Collectors can now even invest in college players through NFTU if they want to go a step further into a more speculative athletic career.
Player Sponsored NFT
Players are excited about the new attention and revenue opportunities they're getting through sports NFTs, but they're not just indifferently letting the action play out through their leagues. Stars are rolling out their own dedicated NFTs. NBA greats like LeBron James and Zion Williamson have sold NFTs for six figures each. - Gronkowski have sold sets totaling millions. Tiger Woods has also gotten in on the action. Tom Brady built a company called Autograph to make it easy for players to launch their own NFT's. Autograph raised $170 million in Series B funding.
Alabama QB Bryce Young is running its first "rookie" NFT
With the artwork of Arturo Torres, the 3626 version will be available on August 31
NFT will also be issued with tokens that have the potential to be used as follows.
Video Chat with Young
Access to early airdrops
Autobiography, Clothing
Website Support
A large team of sites has emerged to analyze each ecosystem. They also provide players with insights on underrated or overrated cards and strategies around the fantasy side of the game. OwnTheMoment, MomentRanks and TheFirstMint all cover Top Shot and All Day, while SorareHub and SorareScout are popular places for Sorare fans. By investing in one of these sites, or even setting up your own, there may be opportunities to earn income. Users with less money can write articles or conduct analysis for these sites for a smaller payout.
To sum up
Sports NFT will be a huge gateway for onlookers to the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The beta version of Top Shot alone has attracted millions of users and generated nearly $1 billion in sales. As marketing increases, these products will become more sophisticated and more users will come in from off the floor. NBA Top Shot is where Dapper began testing several of the innovations they introduced in their newer products, and now many of the early issues in the system seem to have been resolved.
Soccer and cricket have larger and more rabid fan bases that should incite further adoption of Top Shot and Sorare. UFC, MLB, La Liga and other major sports leagues that are entering the ecosystem should drive more marginal growth. Deloitte estimates that we could see $2 billion in revenue from sports NFT this year alone.
Trading cards make sense for the average person, and fantasy sports make sense for the average person. Sports NFT is the logical next extension.
There will be ICOs in 2017 and DeFi in 2020, but 2022 will be the year of the sports NFT.
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