Issue 23: The NFL restricts NFTs, college athletes and a broadcaster

Here's your weekly review on what happened at the intersection of NFTs and Sports:

• 🏟️ FIBA goes NFTs, NFL restricts them
• 🏈 College athletes join Candy, Prescott goes Ethernity
• 🎙️ New drops: Broadcaster Vin Scully, ManCity does it again

Let's have a closer look! 👀

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🏟️ FIBA goes NFTs, NFL restricts them

FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, and Bitci have announced a new global partnership for the period 2021-2023. Bitci will serve as a new Global Partner offering innovative products to the global basketball community. This involves the development of Fan Token (which are fungible token) and "the joint development of NFTs". No further details were given. FIBA is following the example of Euroleague Basketball who launched their first NFTs earlier this year. We're curious if FIBA's NFTs will go the highlight clip or player card route.

And then there was interesting news coming from The Athletic, and further detailed by beincrypto: The NFL informed teams they could not, for now, sell crypto-related sponsorships as well as NFTs as the league develops a strategy around them. This also includes team NFTs like we've seen in other leagues. Even though the NFL is known to be restrictive when it comes to commercial rights this still comes as a surprise. The league has yet to make a move in the blockchain/NFT game, something we would have expected for the upcoming season already, which starts this week. It seems like they want to make sure they're going the right way and probably also with the right partner. Maybe the newly signed deal with Fanatics and its sub company Candy Digital just needs a bit of time to unfold.

🏈 College athletes join Candy, Prescott goes Ethernity

Speaking of Candy Digital... The company has just launched "Sweet Futures" which according to them is the "1st College Athlete NFT Series". Things are kicked off by collections from quarterbacks JT Daniels (Georgia) and DJ Uiagalelei (Clemson), which are almost sold out. We mentioned the new opportunities that come with the new NIL regulations in a previous issue, so this is not an unexpected move. But, we are impressed by the speed with which Candy Digital is moving things forward. Well played!

Staying within the football athlete universe: Dak Prescott, quarterback at the Dallas Cowboys, returns from a severe injury, and drops an NFT collection with Ethernity for his comeback season. Quote: "A technological feat where Ethernity’s developers have coded and re-coded special blockchain-based attributes that will make this NFT like no other. This first of its kind NFT puts Dak in near bionic form as he rebuilds from injury and makes his big comeback". We're curious to see what this will look like...

🎙️ New drops: Broadcaster Vin Scully, ManCity does it again

Now this is a nice one: The Vin Scully: Brooklyn To LA Series celebrates the career of broadcasting legend, Vin Scully. For 67 years, the legendary broadcaster was the primary voice of the Dodgers’ organization, and also brought his storytelling mastery to numerous sports events. Each NFT in the series represents a chapter in Scully's career. The collection is done in partnership with Flux88.

After a successful debut collection, ManCity announced a second one called Creation which consists of three pieces by mixed media artist, Alan Bolton: The Football Laboratory, The Football Academy and To The Blue Moon. The artworks represent the process of creating the perfect footballer. The collection will drop on MakersPlace on Tuesday 7th September.

🤓 Wrapping it up

So what have we learned in this issue?

• Leagues are taking different routes in the NFT game. And the NFL has done something we have not seen before by not allowing teams to run any NFT projects on their own. However, this does not mean they don't believe in the subject, they just like to keep control of it. Let's see what they come up with. Our guess: They'll launch a platform early in the upcoming season.
• College athletes and NFTs is inevitable as already mentioned multiple times. Now Candy Digital is driving things forward and will probably have a first-mover advantage. Could be a big success story in the making.
• And we have learned that also broadcasters have their space in the NFT universe, as the sympathetic Vince Scully collection shows. Of course this makes our brains wonder what will come next: Greenkeeper NFTs? ;) Jokes aside: We believe there are still some untapped opportunities.

That's it for this weeks issue! And as always: Feel free to reach out for feedback and to discuss all things NFT and sports! And to stay up to date: Make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for stats, drop announcements and more. And join us on our Discord server to discuss the latest news and insights about NFTs in sports.