4 Major Sports Franchises That Have Jumped To Web3

In the modern arena of entertainment media, sports are best suited to integrate NFTs for fan engagement and interaction. With NFTs, sports fans can keep their favorite highlights, represent their favorite teams and players, and even participate in the age-old practice of trading collectibles.

Do you wonder how that works? Read on to see how sports franchises and (sometimes) entire sports leagues have approached the practice of adopting NFTs to improve engagement with their respective fanbases.

NBA Top Shot’s vision for the trading cards of the future

Gray markets for collectible trading cards have sprung up to reflect the real-world bets of nearly every major North American sports league for decades. The NBA is no exception: in recent years, collectible cards featuring the league’s most notable players have regularly sold for millions of dollars on the open market. A rookie card for Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic even sold for more than $4 million in February 2021, despite Doncic only reaching his third NBA season at the time of the sale. In light of its initial success, the value of the card may increase even further in the years to come.

But what does all this have to do with NFTs? If Web2 had physical cards, Web3 has NBA Top Shot. Despite the difficulties the collection faced in 2022, it remains a powerful reminder of what getting official licenses can do to ensure the success of an NFT collection. Thanks to NBA Top Shot’s official partnership with the NBA, you received full access to the greatest iconic moments throughout the league’s nearly 80-year history as NFT collectibles for the global NBA fan.

Official co-authoring inevitably led to strong sales of these collectibles, particularly during the massive bull run of 2021. During NBA Top Shot’s peak popularity, the collection saw sales of over $200 million during the months of February and March 2021. Sales have largely declined since then, in line with the rest of the market, but its community has maintained an active interest in what is undoubtedly one of the most straightforward NFT collectibles you can get on the market today.

To take the NBA Top Shot premise to its next logical step, WWE decided to offer fans a more immersive way to collect these animated NFT highlights. Through its WWE Moonsault NFT marketplace, fans can enjoy scheduled releases of 10,000-piece collections called “NFT Flips.”

Each batch of Flips released, alongside WWE’s latest pay-per-view event, also contains a highlight of either the event’s humble beginnings or its ever-growing prominence in the modern world. The initiative started with an NFT drop that coincided with the 2022 Hell in a Cell event, which definitely included one of Reddit’s most enduring memes in the collection of him. Because this is a much newer project than NBA Top Shot, it remains to be seen whether it will reflect the former’s long-term performance or be changed entirely. However, if the last two WWE pay-per-view events are anything to go by, Moonsault is definitely here to stay. A look at the Moonsault marketplace will show you that their Survivor Series-themed releases have sold out.

Major League Soccer signed a boring monkey

Of all the Major League Soccer signings throughout history, perhaps the most unexpected is Striker, a bored monkey. Through this genuinely unique signature, MLS intended to capitalize on the growing sports NFT movement by providing fans with a unique additional layer of entertainment. Prior to the signing, Striker was simply known as Bored Ape #6045, who was acquired by the Get Engaged marketing agency for a healthy sum of 100 ETH. After that, Striker seemed poised to make an impression on soccer fans around the world, thanks to the MLS All-Star Game.

Striker finally made his virtual debut at the MLS All-Star Game on August 10, 2022, celebrated as the league’s newest All-Star. On the virtual field, Striker was set to play the position of, you guessed it, forward.

The NFL will kick off its involvement in the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming space with NFL Rivals, a general manager simulator that allows users to analyze every player from the NFL’s more than 100-year history and select them for consideration in your dream fantasy lists. That means there would not only be some truly stacked all-ages lists, but perhaps even all-time meme lists featuring Tim Tebow’s leading lineups with the likes of Rudy.

However, NFL Rivals will not be just a conventional P2E game. Like its contemporaries in blockchain gaming, it is more often described as a gaming experience of its own. This will allow users to freely trade and trade their highest value players on the open market, either to improve the competitiveness of their roster or to earn some quick extra cash. Ahead of the game’s 2023 release, the NFL has sparked interest in NFTs among its fans with the NFL Rarity League Collection, a series of virtual headsets designed after each individual NFL franchise. Stock is also gradually running out, with each team sporting themed virtual headsets only having several hundred in stock each.