NFTs are replacing ticket stubs for the National Football League, at least for the rest of the games this year.
The league today announced that fans attending games through the end of 2021 will be able to receive a “virtual commemorative ticket” as an NFT in a Ticketmaster digital wallet. The NFTs themselves will live on the Polygon network, like Tom Brady’s Autograph platform.
An NFT is a unique type of blockchain-based token that can be used to prove ownership over a digital item, and these tokens have become extremely popular (and valuable) in the art, gaming and crypto collectible space over the last year.
In order to claim their NFT, NFL fans will need to have purchased their ticket through one of the licensed NFL Ticketing Network vendors–Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek. or a team’s corresponding ticket office.
“Leveraging the emerging world of NFTs is a new and exciting way for us to create additional value and to further engage with fans who attend select games by providing a virtual commemorative ticket,” Bobby Gallo, senior vice president of NFL club business development, said in a press release.
The NFL will begin distributing NFTs to qualifying fans who attend the Thanksgiving Day game featuring the Chicago Bears at the Detroit Lions’s Ford Field.
The virtual commemorative tickets will only be sent to fans who attend the game. For now, they can be viewed on the NFL.live-nfts.com marketplace.
If the NFL-NFT news sounds familiar, it’s because this is the second big NFT announcement from the league this season.
At the end of September, the NFL and Dapper Labs announced the upcoming debut of an NFT marketplace on Dapper’s Flow blockchain, already the home of NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties and upcoming digital collectible marketplaces for LaLiga and the UFC.
“This new fan engagement initiative with Ticketmaster is separate from our partnership with Dapper Labs, where we will offer digital video collectible of NFL video highlights to fans” Matt Basta, a spokesman for the NFL, told Decrypt in an email.
The Flow-based NFT marketplace is said to be launching before the current season ends in February 2022. Its Twitter account has already been urging fans to tag them in plays they want made into collectibles, which has drawn as many replies with video clips as it has ire from impatient collectors.