ISL set to be first Indian sports league to launch unique digital collectibles

The Indian Super League (ISL) is going to be the first Indian sports league to have its exclusive non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as digital collectibles.

The league, co-owned by Reliance Industries (65%) and Star India (35%), has partnered with London-based entertainment-focussed collectible platform Terra Virtua to create unique digital collectibles featuring the league and all its 11 clubs.

“We have signed a two-year licencing partnership with ISL to launch digital collectibles around ISL,” Gary Bracey, CEO at Terra Virtua, told ET. “We are not trying to replicate the trading card culture. What we are trying to do is innovate and create a new collecting culture using our platform.”

Licences London-based Terra Virtua to create unique non-fungible tokens featuring the league and all its 11 clubs for fans

He added that while a lot of sports companies in this space have built up their popularity just based on video clips of the games, ISL and Terra Virtua want to go much further and engage directly with the fans, and make the collectibles an “intrinsic part” of the whole sporting experience.

“We are looking at NFT's as being a whole new form of entertainment. We also got along very well with the ISL team, our philosophies are aligned with regard to how important it is to respect the fans, as well as make a decent commercial product. That's how we sort of forged forward, and we collaborate, and we have been discussing this for a number of months now, and we are both aligned in terms of what we want to do,” he said.

The ISL digital collectables will be launched ahead of the 2021-22 season.

Since the ISL’s launch in 2014, the league’s many memorable moments, player cards, in-match highlights and more will be made available for fans to purchase and trade as interactive memorabilia through Terra Virtua’s unique marketplace under the licenced partnership.

The digital collectibles will also allow ISL and its clubs to connect with the millennials.

Terra Virtua is the world’s first fully immersive social, digital collectibles platform and is one of the world’s leading creators and marketplaces using blockchain technology. It currently offers themed digital collectables across a range of popular movies, television shows and comic books. This partnership with the ISL is Terra Virtua’s first foray into the dynamic sports ecosystem.

Terra Virtua also switched its platform from the Ethereum blockchain to Polygon recently, in a drive to be more sustainable. By making the change, the company has reduced its energy usage in minting NFTs by over 99%.

“In the world of sports, everyone's jumping on to NFT's… it seems to have become the new big thing. But we have been working hard on this for four years. We have spent three years building the platform and have been trading for over one year now. So we are not the sort of new kids on the block,” added Bracey, who is also co-founder of the company.

Terra Virtua also creates personalised rooms for fans, where they can display their collectibles and allow friends in to admire the collection.

"There's no point collecting these things, if you can't show them off,” he quipped.

Globally, NFTs—a blockchain-enabled technology that proves unique ownership of digital content such as video, photo or audio—is changing the way fans buy sports collectibles. Last month, an Indian tech platform, Rario, launched the first cricket-based digital collectibles platforms.