Dapper Labs has come together with the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and the National Football League (NFL) to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These are in the form of digital video highlights and have been created for all NFL fans.
This is only a week after Dapper Labs raised $250 million, as well as create digital collectible NFTs with the LaLiga soccer league. The company’s strategy of combining an existing brand with NFTs worked last year when it partnered with the NBA for NBA Top Shots.
NFTs use blockchain to authenticate items. Dapper Labs used the technology to sell NBA Top Shot moments in the marketplace. The company and fans have sold over $780 million worth of NBA Top Shot moments in the past year.
Canada-based Dapper Labs, which launched its CryptoKitties game in November 2017, is a leader in the booming NFT collectibles market. The company has come a long way since it first started out as a small team of developers. They have now raised $50 million from top venture capital firms and made a name for themselves. The 30-person firm is working on a fantasy soccer game that uses NFTs and raised $12 million in July from SoftBank for its future endeavors.
The NFL and its partners are pushing for fan engagement. They are doing this by allowing fans to own digital video moments of the season's best plays, making use of Dapper Labs’ blockchain technology.
The NFL will soon launch a new digital collectibles platform that will allow fans to own and collect some of their favorite moments from the gridiron. The new platform will offer unique, digital collectibles for use outside of Madden Ultimate Team allowing users to experience in-game highlights with all-new augmented reality technology. NFL fans will be able to collect some of the greatest moments from NFL history.
The company wants to give 300 million NFL fans a chance to own their favorite moments from the sport. NFT’s will be available for fans to buy and open, so they can collect their favorite hero players. Fans will also have a chance to show off their newest digital collection, and trade with other fans.
Just like the many other products from the company, fans can buy, showcase, sell, and trade any of their moments. This will all be done in a dedicated marketplace on Dapper Labs’ Flow protocol.
In other news, the company is focusing on a WNBA version of the Top Shots moments.
The NFLPA View
OneTeam Partners is a group licensing partner of the NFLPA. Also, it should be noted that its chief product officer is the one who facilitated this new deal in collaboration with all parties. He said in an interview recently that "the players are more accepting of [gaming] than the team owners."
Poker pro, David Lowenfels, said he has always felt that the sports gaming market was underserved. He believes in the power of athletes to bring new monetization to sports, and he’s been doing some impactful work on their behalf. In particular, he helped set up a partnership between Dapper Labs and top-tier NBA player, Joel Embiid.
The NFL and NFLPA have both been betting on new platforms, like Dapper Labs and Nifty Games, which is a new mobile gaming company. At the moment, Nifty Games is in the process of making a new NFL Clash multiplayer mobile game.
Lowenfels said, “There are experiences that are more casual and there are experiences that are a little bit more mass market. With NFTs, we can take these collectible moments and put them in the audience’s hands in a way that is a lot of fun.”
Lowenfels added that they were excited about new features that the NBA is bringing to Top Shot, and they want to do even more with the NFL product. He seemed delighted with everything, adding that he thinks there’s a lot of exciting possibilities for the NFL.
On Sundays during the season, players can be sure that there will be a game of flag football. The team is planning to take advantage of this and make it a topic of conversation for weeks to come.
NFTs have blown up over the past few months and we definitely hope that this deal will bring in a lot of profits and investments.
