The NFL mints NFTs

Super Bowl LVI takes place next week on February 13th 2022 and brings with it the introduction of web3 technology in the form of NFTs, to the most-watched annual sporting event in the world.

The Super Bowl

Since 1966 The Super Bowl has been the final deciding game in the playoff championships for the National Football League, known as the NFL.

Every year, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest sporting events across the globe. The game is televised in over 130 countries and broadcast in 30 different languages. For the last 10 years, the viewership has regularly sat at around the 100 million people mark, making it a prime spot for advertisers and performers alike.

This year in Super Bowl LVI (56 for those not versed in Latin), the LA Rams from the NFC (National Football Conference), face off against the Cincinnati Bengals from the AFC (American Football Conference). After 2021’s NFL season was hit with severe covid-19 restrictions, this year’s event is expected to be a spectacle to remember, with halftime performances from Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar.

2022 has also proven to be the year of NFTs so far, with interest in non-fungible tokens secured by blockchain technology soaring as celebrities and big-name brands jump on board Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, in line with the continuing development of the technology underpinning our shift to Web3 technology.

Staying with this booming trend for NFT collectables, the NFL has announced it will be giving lucky fans in attendance a collectable NFT with their ticket to the Super Bowl, to commemorate the occasion.

The collectable NFT will feature the seat number, row and section that the corresponding ticket has, ensuring each fan has a lasting souvenir of their attendance at one of the sporting world’s biggest events.

NFT Memorabilia

However, this year’s Super Bowl isn’t the first time that the NFL has utilised NFTs to help enhance the connection fans feel with the live experience they watch.

Throughout the 2022 season, the NFL also deployed NFT collectables attached to tickets for a number of regular-season games. Robert Gallo, the senior vice president of the NFL’s club business development explained that the success of the NFTs in the regular season made them an obvious choice for the league’s biggest game, seeing them as a tool to engage with fans and deepen their connection with the teams and league they support.

NFT collectables attached to event tickets offer event creators, performers and artists a way of rewarding fans, alongside improving the experience of the live event itself with a memento or souvenir. Of course, live events provide memories that can last a lifetime, but for fans, the opportunity to add a one-of-a-kind digital token that commemorates the occasion will provide additional engagement.

The Future

NFTs are the hot property of the moment, even Super Bowl halftime performer Snoop Dogg has recently been making headlines with his purchase of NFT land in The Sandbox metaverse. Alongside that are various virtual concerts ticketed through NFTs and even fashion designers are getting in on digital drops with the likes of Gucci and Balenciaga exploring the Web3 space.

The collectable nature of these one-off digital pieces is only just being explored by a wider audience outside of the blockchain and Web3 community.

It’s exciting to see more and more mainstream brands and events come on board with NFT content and it opens up the possibilities for what the future holds for the blockchain platforms and decentralised web technology we are beginning to adopt.

The SeatlabNFT platform is designed precisely with the same goal as the NFL’s NFT drop in mind — increase fan engagement and reward their loyalty. As with most Web3 technology, we should expect to see it help deepen immersion in the experiences and entertainment we already enjoy, and help us regain control of secondary ticketing marketplaces that have previously seen little oversight and assist in the ongoing fight against ticket fraud and scalping.

Now that Super Bowl LVI is utilising NFTs as a souvenir of their time at the big game, we’re hoping to see an increase in performers, artists and event creators making use of the newly available NFTs to reward their fans and enhance the experience offered by their live event.

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