The National Football League (NFL), once again experimenting with non-fungible tokens, (NFT), has launched a series of card-themed collectibles tied into its upcoming player draft.
The collection is live on the league’s Polygon-based marketplace, which it unveiled in November 2021 and has since been used for various playoff game ticketing promotions.
The NFTs will also be given out to members of this year’s “Inner Circle” club, which includes fans selected to represent each team on draft night.
“Those are just the ones we gave out for free, so we were impressed by the engagement numbers for sure,” Sam Rubinroit, the NFL’s director of club business development, told CoinDesk in an interview. “A good number of the NFTs we released for purchase sold out within 24 hours of their release.”
Rubinroit said the ticketing collectible platform is still very much in its “test and learn phase,” with larger plans cued up for the upcoming season. NFTs from its initial “Regular Season Clubs” collection was one point trading hands for thousands of dollars a piece, but have since cooled off to the $300-$600 range for the more popular teams.
The Polygon-based marketplace, which is not only one of the many NFT waters in which the league has been dipping its toes over the last year, is the most prominent being a partnership between NBA Top Shotmaker Dapper Labs and NFL All Day. Top Shot and All Day both use the Flow blockchain.
The league’s players association (NFLPA) has a few crypto-related partnerships of its own, including an NFT tie-up with sports betting giant DraftKings and a partnership with the metaverse game Upland.
