How Blockasset and NFTs help bridge the gap between athletes and fans

The NFT space has been growing at a similar, if not higher, pace as compared to the early days of cryptocurrencies.

While cryptocurrencies are also thought of as digital tokens, NFTs bring more value to this basic digitalized concept by representing a unique asset.

In essence, NFTs are non-fungible tokens that represent the same value in a digital ecosystem as carried by the underlying asset in real life. The asset is represented digitally through some characteristics known as metadata that uniquely identifies the asset.

It’s the non-fungible property of NFTs that distinguishes them from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Fungible items, also known as interchangeable items, can be easily traded for equivalent items like cash, gold, or even Bitcoin. NFTs, on the other hand, are one-of-a-kind collectibles that can’t be traded and can be used to hold evidence of digital ownership information.

Consider baseball cards but in the form of a personalized digital collection.

The buzz around these tokens originally came from the concept of digital artworks but that’s no longer the case!

The world has been taken by storm by NFTs and when the dust settles, real-life use cases will come out to be the future of assets.

NFTs beyond the hype

What kind of NFTs has been sold till now?

• Everyday, The First 500 Days, sold by Beeple at $69 million
• The First Tweet of Jack Dorsey sold at $2,915,835.47
• The Disaster Girl meme, featuring Zoe Roth sold close to 400k USD
• A column on The New York Times sold for $555,289

The sales are not entirely composed of tweets or memes. The NFTs are destined to represent assets that have previously been illiquid, lacked visibility, and had limited access along with multiple intermediaries.

Take diamonds for example. Having a unique diamond is surely a prized possession and a good investment, but the money invested in a diamond is just sitting there, idle and nonproductive. You can not use 10% of that amount for any other purpose if you need it.

Imagine if you could list this diamond on a digital marketplace with all its unique characteristics and someone buys 10% of the diamond. When you sell the whole diamond, the 10% goes to that person while in the meantime, you get a 10% liquid fund.

This is the power of NFTs.

According to nonfungible, a website that tracks token sales, NFT sales have been experiencing a decline since the 1st of June and the current sales figures are the same as they were at the start of this so-called “NFT year”.

All this symbolizes is that the innovative and meaningful implementation of NFTs is making its way.

This is where the concept of NFTs applies to the sports industry.

While there are many possible use-cases, NFTs in sports open a whole plethora of opportunities when it comes to bridging the gap between athletes and fans.

Especially since sports have long relied on fan participation to sow the seeds of their popularity and enormous revenue, sports organizations are bracing for some adjustments in the aftermath of the COVID outbreak.

While the relevance of digital interactions has already been recognized in this pandemic, the consumption of digital goods is set to grow dramatically in the near future.

Simply put, the pathway of NFTs to bridge the gap between athletes and fans appears to be as appealing as it gets!

The Value added by NFTs for connecting fans with athletes

While critics of NFTs question how some fans can pay thousands of dollars for photographs or video clips that are readily available to the public, they cherish exclusivity above everything else.

To begin with, many sports fans are only a few steps away from acquiring merchandise or a memento of their favorite team or player. Furthermore, it’s like a cherry on the cake for them if the value of NFT is backed by an actual, real-time moment of joy or emotional experience.

For instance, according to Cointelegraph, NFT star Rob Gronkowski dropped his championship series NFT collection that generated over $1.8 million in NFT sales. The bid for a “one-of-a-kind GRONK career highlight card” was bought for approximately $430,000.

What did the fan get out of it?

While the fan can display the NFT card as the one and only version of the highlight and even utilize it as a kind of investment, the fan’s decision may have been influenced by opportunities such as meeting the celebrity, tickets to one of his games, and an invitation to his next beach party.

Although supporting teams and players play a key role in deciding whether to invest in NFT, according to a study by Bonusfinder, it was the long-term investment potentials for the fans that made them invest in the NFTs in the first place.

All in all, the value added by NFTs is playing a crucial role in connecting fans with athletes.

Be that as it may, it isn’t just the fans who’re benefitting from the NFTs!

How can athletes leverage NFTs?

Athletes have long been at the forefront of sports innovation. When it comes to monetizing their brands and image rights, athletes have constantly demanded a different value than what their team showcases. We have heard multiple reports during major transfers of athletes demanding their image rights to continue to become their own. Why is that?

While athletes used Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat to advertise and connect with fans, no other digital interaction or marketing opportunity comes close to the concept that NFT offers. Considering the influence of digital assets on today’s youth being much more than physical ones, NFTs will soon be used as a benchmark to measure an athlete’s popularity.

The collectible card business, which blends the concepts of authenticity and scarcity, is at the pedestal of NFT applications available to athletes. One way to capitalize is through digital advertising as Oleksandra Oliynykova did by leveraging her arm space for advertisement. Selling the rights of some behind-the-scenes clips can also trigger many revenue streams for athletes.

And the best part?

This space created by NFTs will not be dominated by major sports sponsors and will allow fans and athletes to interact more closely.

What are the popular platforms used to create NFTs?

Essentially, Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchains and one of the first platforms to enable the production of NFTs. While Ethereum was initially used to build the majority of NFTs, its crowded marketplace and inability to keep up with the tremendous demand for NFTs caused users to go to other platforms such as Flow, Solana, Wax, and Matic.

When it comes to the emerging leader in this space, Solana is shaking things up by developing technology that can easily meet ground-breaking performance criteria.

Solana is an open-source blockchain with the goal of scaling transactions proportionally to bandwidth while adhering to the blockchain concepts of decentralization, security, and scalability.

Why Solana?

• Under the Proof of Work system, Bitcoin and Ethereum support 10 TPS, but only Solana has come close to supporting over 50,000 TPS with its Proof of History. As a result, it is the first web-scale decentralized network in the world.
• Solana also has an unequaled low-cost transaction fee advantage over its competitors (10 dollars for a million transactions)

When paired with the sports industry, the NFT concept appears to be a natural fit. While the NBA was one of the first to capitalize on this opportunity by partnering with Dapper Labs to develop NBA Top Shots, there are a few other blockchain-based sports applications that have the potential to earn as much revenue as NBA Top Shots.

And one of them is Blockasset!

Blockasset, built on Solana, is an upcoming athlete NFT platform and marketplace that is leading the pack to immortalize sporting moments and fan engagement with athletes.

Although Blockasset has already revealed a notable catalog of world-class athletes, including Darren Till, Giorgio Chiellini, and Leon Edwards, they are on a quest to connect with even more elite athletes with their application.

Such a roster would surely please a sports enthusiast!

Especially since Blockasset ensures that fans can earn physical incentives such as match tickets, meet and greets, and even some exclusive gear in addition to the benefits of NFT smart contracts.

Blockasset has prioritized not just the fans’ perspective, but also the athletes’, by providing them with a platform through which they can monetize their brand in the future. It will also ensure that each NFT art piece meets the highest standards and is one-of-a-kind. All of this, while transferring all funds straight into the athlete’s wallet, eliminates the need for a middleman to take a cut and raise the price of NFT.

Blockasset has placed a strong emphasis on the user experience it will deliver to each sports fan, regardless of whether or not the fan is familiar with cryptocurrencies. NFT holders would also be able to resell their NFTs in the marketplace with other like-minded enthusiasts.

Wait, there’s more!

Blockasset’s ecosystem is powered by the $BLOCK token with a limited supply of 200 million. The token would be used for the purposes of staking, NFT yield farming, and governance.

Final Words

Despite the fact that NFT is still considered a “young technology,” its potential for growth and the craze do not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Furthermore, as more athletes, celebrities, and artists join the NFT market, new opportunities for them to monetize their brands have surfaced.

More announcements about Blockasset will be made in the coming months, with NFT event ticketing, live events, and athlete tokenization already setting the tone for the future.