The NBA championship kicked off on October 22. This season, we can expect intrigue on the court and technological innovations beyond it. Blockchain and NFT continue to change the usual understanding of the word “fan”: now you can own unique moments, support teams with fan tokens, and participate in closed fan communities. I wonder if blockchain will become the bridge between athletes and their fans, or is it just hype? Let’ы figure out what will come of it! Let’s discuss how blockchain can change the fan experience and whether these new technologies are worth trusting.
Why NFT in Sport
NFT comes from the phrase “non-fungible token”. It is a digital object that is unique and unrepeatable. It cannot be replaced or exchanged for something else, like money or regular digital files.
For the sports industry, one of the most suitable applications of non-fungible tokens is the creation of exclusive digital goods for fans. For example, these can be collectible player cards, in the form of #NFT. These souvenirs have high value due to their uniqueness and limited edition.
NFT technology opens up completely new possibilities for creating virtual collectibles. Unique moments from games, rare footage from training, or even personal messages from favorite athletes – all this can become part of the collection. Fans can collect such digital cards, sell them on marketplaces, or simply keep them in their wallets as souvenirs.
How NFT Can Impact Ticket Business
The NBA championship is of great interest to millions of basketball fans around the world. Teams and star players are incredibly popular, so it is very difficult to get to important matches, especially the playoffs or finals.
The fact is that tickets for such key NBA matches are always in great shortage. Arenas where games are held have a limited number of spectators, and demand far exceeds the supply.
The excitement creates fertile ground for the thriving underground business of reselling tickets to matches.
Blockchain can completely change the approach to selling tickets to sports events, but the question is: how effective and economically viable will it be? On the one hand, using peer-to-peer networks as a basis for ticketing platforms will increase the level of security and transparency of transactions.
On the other hand, there are several arguments against using blockchain in ticket sales:
- Transaction fees. Each ticket transaction involves the purchase, confirmation, and burning of tokens. The economic benefit of using blockchain is questionable since the total cost of commissions can be unreasonably high. For example, in the Ethereum network, the cost of gas can sometimes reach half the cost of a ticket, making transactions unprofitable.
- Insufficient throughput. Although existing technologies can provide high throughput for processing a large number of transactions in real-time, at critical moments – with a huge influx – the blockchain can process transactions with a delay.
Blockchain would be very useful in the field of sports services, but there are also quite serious technical and economic obstacles to the implementation of this technology in everyday practice.
Nevertheless, all these difficulties do not stop sponsors, and they continue to invest in sports.
Rakuten, Holiverse — What Other Crypto Companies Support Sports?
Lately, cooperation between blockchain companies and sports clubs has become quite common. Here are some examples.
The NBA team Golden State Warriors have partnered with cryptocurrency platform Rakuten Wallet. As part of this collaboration, the company’s logo has become part of the team’s equipment – it appeared on the players’ training jerseys. This move underscored the interest of the blockchain industry in the sports sector and showed the clubs’ willingness to adapt to the new realities of the market.
The Serbian basketball team Partizan 3×3, as part of “JSD Partizan”, known for its success in 3×3 basketball, has signed a contract with #Holiverse, a company specializing in personalized medicine and #metaverses. Such cooperation makes it clear that sports clubs are beginning to actively explore digital spaces, offering their fans the chance to try interactive opportunities.
Manchester City has signed a long-term agreement with the OKX crypto exchange. Under the terms of the contract, OKX received the status of the club’s official partner for cryptocurrencies and tokens exchange. This alliance once again confirms the interest of large sports organizations in the use of blockchain technologies.
In addition to title sponsorship, sports are actively merging with virtual reality. Sports clubs see this as an opportunity to not only expand their revenues, but also to attract a new audience – those who are more interested in technology than in traditional sports.
Меtaverses and Sports
Metaverses take the interaction of sports teams and fans to a new level: here, the possibilities of virtual reality are added to the traditional communication between fans and athletes.
Thanks to metaverses, sports fans get the opportunity to watch matches in real time right from home. They can watch the game through VR gadgets, getting the effect of presence at the stadium.
Moreover, spectators themselves choose different viewing angles and can not only move the camera closer to the players, but even be among them on the virtual field.
In Metaverses, you can organize meetings with players and coaches. It’s like a real round table: fans ask questions and communicate with their favorite athletes. Such virtual gatherings create a close connection between fans and the team and enhance the effect of fan involvement in success.
Lado Okhotnikov, a CEO of Holiverse, did not choose sports as another area of investment activity by chance. In 2024, Holiverse became the general sponsor of the Serbian basketball team Partizan 3×3.
A Metaverse Virtual Space (MVS) created by Lado Okhotnikov will demonstrate to basketball fans all the possibilities of the virtual world for communicating with the team and their favorite sport. And these will not only be virtual matches, but also quizzes, competitions and quests for fans, according to the results of which fans will receive prizes.
Another interesting function of the metaverse may be the ability to create personalized avatars. Fans will be able to choose the appearance of their character, add elements of the uniform of their favorite team and even wear virtual copies of real goods released by the club.
But MVS is not limited to regular avatars: Holiverse has developed a technology for creating an avatar based on the user’s DNA. A person can create a digital double for himself with properties that are unique to him and that he has in real life. The digital double can test in the metaverse how the body will react to physical activity or diets, and the person, based on this data, draws a conclusion about which nutrition and physical activity system to use.
The same technology can be used in training and preparation for competitions. Sports medicine expects a real breakthrough: the use of DNA avatars for training and rehabilitation after injuries will allow us to analyze the personal characteristics of athletes and develop individual programs and treatment protocols taking into account the characteristics of metabolism and other indicators of physical condition.
We can safely say that the use of DNA doubles will open a new chapter in the development of sports medicine, based on a deeper knowledge of the athletes’ bodies.
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