Fishburners chairman Clive Mayhew tips $1.2m into blockchain golf company Play Today by Mirk founders Mark and Michael Dries

But the company also operates NFTs and a metaverse, which takes the form of a virtual clubhouse where golfers are envisioned to congregate, trade stories, watch live coverage of events, or attend special events.

“What started it, to be honest, is COVID, because suddenly nobody was allowed to submit their handicap using a physical card and all the golf clubs started using these first-generation digital scoring apps, which are very basic,” Mr Mayhew said.

“What Michael and Mark have done is just gamified it and made it more exciting for golfers.”

Mr Mayhew is a mainstay of the Australian tech scene, and chairman of local start-up group Fishburners. He rose to prominence in the late 1990s as the Australian CEO of Netscape.

In 2014, he sold Sky Software, a student management technology company he co-founded, for $21 million.

Michael Dries said Mr Mayhew’s investment had helped the brothers refocus their business efforts on Play Today.

The team of 15 developers and augmented reality specialists who had previously worked on client projects have all been redeployed to work full-time on Play Today.

Strategic partnerships

Mr Dries said the scoring app and wallet were based on the Flow blockchain, which is known as the blockchain underpinning the US National Basketball Association’s Top Shot digital collectibles.

“We went through a pretty rigorous process of short-listing about four or five blockchains that we thought would survive and be around in the medium to long term,” he said.

“Our goal is 100,000 mobile app users by the end of 2023, which would sound like a lot if we were just hoping for individuals to sign up through an app store, but we have a number of strategic partnerships in place where we will bring in tens of thousands of users at once as their scoring partners.”

Play Today aims to expand to the UK and US in the first half of this year.

Mr. Dries is not concerned about the relatively poor perception of the metaverse in many quarters, such as disparaging comments about inanimate events and legless characters in Facebook’s metaverse, because he says he is playing the long game.

“The uptake is definitely a concern, but I think with all these things, including NFTs, there’s always going to be some short-term skepticism,” he said.

“But if you look at the longer term, it looks more impressive. We are positive about digital wallets and the metaverse, with the idea that we will attract golfers with the content that is there, rather than having a ‘build it and they will come’ approach.’

Transaction Fees

Another facet of the business model is a digital wallet with golf-related tokens to unlock metaverse experiences, or display positions in virtual leagues. This will act as a Trojan horse of sorts to introduce the golfing demographic to the world of digital assets.

If they then start using that wallet for many transactions in the longer term, Play Today hopes to develop a nice revenue line in transaction fees.

“The idea is a very simple thing. You play golf, you score your round, and at the end of the round you submit it for your handicap, but you also put your scorecard on the blockchain using your digital wallet,” Mayhew said.

“It’s a big deal because it’s really hard right now to create digital wallets for older generations. They just hear about all the speculative crypto stuff and it’s just scary for most people.

“So what they’ve built here is a way to put out a digital wallet very quickly, and with that crypto wallet comes the fact that you have a token that allows you to then take them into the golf metaverse.”

With a plus one handicap, Mark Dries is a formidable golfer in his own right and believes golfers’ devotion to the game will draw them to add the digital facet to it, allowing them to track their own performance and interact with others.

“There is no other sports person more obsessive than a golfer. “If you’re not part of that room, you probably don’t fully understand the seriousness of them,” he said.

“But basically, from apparel to equipment to professional golf, to talking about golf, it means we think we can get a lot of engagement.”