Are sports NFTs a good investment?
Sports NFTs are a burgeoning component in the non-fungible tokens (NFT) market, empowering sports enthusiasts to amass digital trading cards, virtual memorabilia, etc.
This article will provide in-depth details regarding what sports NFTs are, where you can fetch them, and whether they fit the bill.
What are sports NFTs?
In simple terms, Sports NFTs utilize blockchain services to create verifiably unique digital assets. They act for digital trading sports cards, sporting events, digital collectables, and other sports items.
The distribution of sports NFTs bestows a chance for players, leagues, and sports brands with a new method to rake in big bucks while entitling enthusiasts to collaborate with the club they admire and players in a new system.
To exemplify, possessing limited edition virtual collectables of one’s most-cherished basketball team or a scarce collectable card of a baseball player you admire is something that beaucoup enthusiasts are willing to pay a handsome amount for. Consequently, sports NFTs often fetch a price for thousands and thousands of dollars (or more), and the worth of a few scarcely pieces has grown considerably post-minting.
Where can you buy sports NFTs?
As far as buying sports NFTs is concerned, numerous marketplaces are at the disposal of prospective investors. So let’s analyze the two most active NFT marketplaces that deal in sports-related NFTs.
OpenSea
OpenSea has earned the distinction of being the world’s leading NFT marketplace, empowering anyone from any part of the world to mint, sell, and purchase many non-fungible tokens. Its range includes digital art and music to crypto artefacts and sports NFTs; this reliable platform possesses almost anything the NFT market offers to its prospective investors.
Raible
The experts regard Raible as one of the leading NFT marketplaces where users can mint, sell, and purchase a wide range of divergent types of non-fungible tokens. The “community-centric NFT marketplace” has expertise in dealing with NFTs representing PFPs(profile pictures), art, domains, music, and more. The buyers can also fetch NFTs from numerous leading sports NFT brands on this reliable platform.
Moreover, apart from Ethereum (ETH)-based assets, Raible also exposes NFTs administrated on Tezos (XTZ), Flow (FLOW), and Polygon (MATIC).
Autograph
Autograph is the brainchild of American Football star Tom Brady. It is a sports NFT platform that signs limited edition sports artefacts from leading sports stars and erstwhile athletes.
Autograph espouses NFTs on Ethereum and Polygon platforms.
Top Sports Card NFT Brands
Moreover, apart from famous athletes, such as Rob Gronkowski, catching attention by making NFTs collections, a few sports NFT brands have evolved to acquire a substantial share of the sports NFT market. Let’s have a cursory glance at those.
So rare
So rare is a fantasy football game dealing in trading cards with this unique feature of empowering players to purchase, sell, and trade collectable cards. So rare players perform the role of football managers by forming teams comprising five football players utilizing virtual cards depicted as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Each card showcases a real-world football player, and their performance during the match alters the score on So rare.
NBA Topshot
NBA Topshot is the creation of Dapper Labs (also the creators of for CryptoKitties). NBA Top Shot is a virtual trading card platform available on the FLOW blockchain, and its USP is that the NBA Players Association officially licenses it. NBA Top Shot NFTs are short videos depicting notable slam dunks, three-pointers, and other enticing game events, called “Moments.”
NBA Top Shot saw a massive incline in its revenue and touched a market capitalization of over USD 1.1 billion in March 2022.
NFL All Day
The end of the 2021 NFL season was the beginning of NFL All Day as a trading card game in collaboration betwixt the NFL and Dapper Labs. The platform permits fans to purchase and amass NFTs of players and memorable moments in the NFL.
NFL All Day is operational on the FLOW blockchain, and when writing this piece of content, it acquired a market capitalization of USD 68.15 million.
UFC Strike
Another collaboration that brings trading cards to the proximity of fans is UFC Strike, which is the brainchild of Dapper Labs and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Just like NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day, UFC Strike allows fans to amass virtual trading cards inspired by famous fighters as NFTs minted through the FLOW blockchain.
UFC Strike’s market capitalization was at USD 7.9 million in March 2022.
Should you collect sports NFTs?
Sports NFTs have been in the headlines due to the celebrity status of the players’ names being a part of high-profile drops.
Apart from this, frontrunner NFT companies, most notably Dapper Labs and Sorare, have left no stone unturned to grab licensing deals with the top-notch sports leagues in the world, empowering sports enthusiasts to get engaged with their favourite clubs and players in an exciting new initiative in the digital world.
Sports NFTs have also empowered learned collectors to draw substantial returns by purchasing the right collectable cards and virtual memorabilia and disposing of it at a profit during the NFT boom in 2021.
While the NFT market has nosedived as compared to last year, dropped by the considerable decline in the crypto markets, the number of sports enthusiasts foraying the NFT space could provide unstinted support to incline the value of sports NFTs higher in the coming years.
Nevertheless, the NFT market is highly volatile and amassing sports NFTs can be detrimental as it could bring total loss of funds, for example, if an NFT brand parts ways with a licensing agreement (like F1 Delta Time earlier this year). Hence, anyone planning to purchase sports NFTs as an investment should only invest within their capacity to lose because the probability of losing money is high in the NFT market.
To conclude, if you are an enthusiast and have no qualms about paying “any price” to fetch the latest collectable of your favourite league or player, then investing in sports NFTs is prudent.