World Poker Tour team with Theta launches season ticket NFT
Season 19 episodes coming soon
The World Poker Tour (WPT) continued its dive into the world of NFTs, announcing that it will partner with Theta Labs to create a Web3-based season pass for WPT broadcasts, billed as the first such product of its kind. The 12-month WPT Season Pass will exist on the Theta blockchain.
“We are proud to partner with Theta to offer users an exclusive way to access WPT Seasons 18 and 19 with the first Digital Season Pass powered by Theta Metachain,” said WPT CEO Adam Pliska in a recent press release. “The WPT has always taken a forward-thinking approach to using technology to engage with our users, and this is the next step in providing more value to our loyal fans.”
The WPT Season Pass will be provided to WPT NFT owners for free and will also be available for sale on ThetaDrop. The Season 19 Pass will give holders the ability to watch episodes live without commercials, including new episodes airing weekly from December 2022 to February 2023.
We’re not sure what the original selling price for the WPT Season Pass was, but there are currently eight for sale on ThetaDrop’s peer-to-peer marketplace at prices ranging from $22 to $250.
NFTur
Now you might be asking, “What’s the point?” and rest assured, I have also thought the same thing. The idea behind the blockchainization of this WPT subscription is to make the season ticket fully transferable or salable. So if you buy the season pass and decide you’re not going to need it anymore, you can sell it on the blockchain to someone else and get some of your money back. Or, if there is somehow high demand, make a profit (I can’t imagine the latter would be the case).
Not to go all “old man yelling at the cloud” or anything – after all, I own some NFTs myself – but this seems like a solution in search of a problem. Is the demand for the WPT season so great, and do viewers have such a great need to be able to transfer ownership of the season pass, that a season pass NFT is necessary? May be? When I was an IT consultant, I said, “Don’t implement technology just to implement technology.” This seems like such a situation.
If I bought a season pass the old way, I could always transfer it to someone by giving them my login information, changing the password before doing so if it’s a password I’ve used with other accounts. If email address changes are allowed (no idea), then all the better. The new setup just seems way too complicated. One positive though is that ThetaDrop seems to accept USD, so people who don’t know anything about crypto can probably buy a WPT Season Pass without too much trouble.
Of course, there is a significant overlap between hardcore poker fans (the people who would buy a WPT Season Pass) and crypto/blockchain enthusiasts, so it’s entirely possible that those who would be interested in the Season Pass like the idea of an NFT and have no problem with the process .
