What are Sports NFTs and what are the 5 most popular Sports NFT projects?

While it might not seem like the most seamless partnership in the Web3 landscape, NFTs and sports are proving to be a match made in heaven. To date, several sports-focused NFT projects have launched, some of which have resulted in the emergence of billion-dollar businesses.

How sports NFTs work

Sports NFT is a type of utility NFT that offers fans a more flexible way to collect cards and memorabilia. In many cases, non-fungible tokens can double as not just collectibles, but fully functional games.

There are many examples of how sports NFTs can work, including:

• Exchange card which closely mimic trading cards that have long been popular for sports such as baseball, American football, basketball and soccer.
• Highlights which gives fans the ability to digitally own their favorite moments in matches as video clips.
• Team set which can include jerseys, wristbands, socks and boots that any collector can seek to own. Having this outfit secured on the chain as an NFT means fans can virtually buy and sell these assets.
• Memorable items, including autographs, trophies and awards, can also be recreated as NFTs for fans to seek out.

Because ownership is secured on the blockchain, sports NFTs can deliver large levels of utility to surpass the capabilities traditional sports collectibles can muster. Many of the world’s most popular NFT sports projects seek to bring gamification to owning these tokens.

Sports NFT Drops

Sports NFT drops are incredibly important to the genre because they keep things fresh in the ecosystem, provide greater utility to tokens, and ensure players stay engaged. A sports NFT release can refer to a new game that is scheduled to launch, new NFTs coming to a platform, or in-game freebies that are “airdropped” to players.

For scheduled content drops, there are many useful calendars online detailing what’s coming up for NFT games, while social media can be a great place for users to access the important airdrops for certain games that distribute free NFTs to holders.

When it comes to accessing airdrops, typical in-game requirements tend to involve players who are already participating in the game and have either the platform’s native cryptocurrency in their built-in wallets or a certain number of NFTs already. The beauty of getting a sports NFT airdrop is that you can get access to a valuable token without having to make a purchase.

With this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the five most popular NFT sports projects.

Trading card and fantasy football hybrid platform Sorare can be considered a spectrum of the Web3 space without having to qualify its credentials as a sports platform. The French company was valued at $4.3 billion at last count and recently secured a reported £30 million deal to gain licensing rights for the English Premier League.

Sorare taps into sports fans’ love of themed cards and makes them useful as NFTs. Each game week, players can use players’ NFTs to create five-a-side teams and compete to win prizes based on players’ real-world performance.

With three million global players, Sorare grew a lot in 2022, reaching new partnerships with the NBA and MLB to introduce licensed basketball and baseball versions of its game.

The game even has a free-to-play format with “regular” cards, which are not registered on the blockchain, but can give users a path to win their first NFTs and compete for top players and cash prizes further down the the line. Furthermore, many assets are listed on the platform’s built-in marketplace and externally on leading NFT exchanges such as Opensea.

With different rarities opening the door to different levels of prizes, Sorare’s most sought-after cards can also command sensational prices. In fact, of the 26 most expensive soccer NFTs ever sold, Sorare cards take up 18 of the list, with the most expensive, a 1/1 unique Erling Haaland bringing $687,000 at auction.

Taking a different approach, NBA Top Shot gives fans the opportunity to own their favorite basketball moments. Focusing squarely on the NBA, Top Shot allows users to access official game highlight videos as digital collectibles that can be bought, sold or traded on the site’s expansive marketplace.

There is much more to come from Top Shot’s groundbreaking concept, and as one of the most accessible marketplaces for collectors with no cryptocurrency purchase requirements, there is certainly a lot other NFT sports platforms can learn from the project.

Launched by American football icon Tom Brady, Autograph.io is a sports NFT marketplace that enables users to buy and trade their very own limited edition digital sports collectibles signed by some of the world’s most famous athletes such as Brady himself, Tiger Woods, Devin Booker, Coco Gauff, Derek Jeter and Sabrina Ionescu.

The artwork associated with the limited edition collections is striking, making Autograph.io a one-stop shop for digital sports collectors.

Coming from NBA Top Shot creators, Dapper Labs, NFL All Day is a platform that allows users to buy and trade their favorite American football moments as NFTs.

In NFL All Day, the leading NFT currency is “Moments”, which come in the form of licensed video highlights that collectors can buy and sell as they wish. These moments come in different types and levels, all equipped with their own digital serial numbers that guarantee authenticity and history of ownership.

Due to the addition of serial numbers, different cards may become rarer based on the type of serial number they have. Early Additions or Final Additions are considered more valuable, while serial numbers corresponding to player kits are usually more sought after by collectors on the All Day Marketplace.

Ultimate Champions is another game that offers a trading card and fantasy football format for a variety of sports. With easier access to NFTs from the platform’s free-to-play games, Ultimate Champions has seen a lot of early success following its launch in mid-2022.

As a more unique element for the Web3 game, the platform launched its own cryptocurrency as an in-game token, $CHAMP. Equipped with a user-friendly and constantly evolving interface and some major licensing deals with major soccer teams such as Arsenal in the Premier League and Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, along with basketball’s Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, there seems to be a lot more in store for Ultimate Masters.

Looking at the future of sports NFTs

NFTs have resonated widely with sports fans who want to continue collecting memorabilia in a more digital environment. However, due to the shared love of nostalgia and collectibles among sports fans, the association between non-fungible tokens and various sports around the world has plenty of room for further growth.

As we continue to grow into the Web3 age, we will likely see more advanced use cases emerge between football and NFTs, and it is likely that we will even see the rise of sports NFT video games in the medium term.

With this in mind, there is much for both sports fans and NFT collectors to enjoy in the coming years.