DraftKings strategizes the future of fantasy football with “gamified NFT collections”

The Future. Sports-betting company DraftKings and the NFL Player’s Association are teaming up on “gamified NFT collections,” bringing fantasy football to the blockchain. While the offering is capitalizing on the runaway success of NFTs, it may actually be heralding the wider mainstream adoption of tech-enabled sports betting, which is quickly becoming legal across the country.

Own a player
Fantasy football may be entering the web3 era.

• DraftKings and the NFL Player’s Association have signed a pact for an “NFT gaming collaboration.”
• The blockchain-backed collection will offer NFTs of real NFL players.
• NFT-holders will be able to use them in (fantasy) games against each other, buy and sell NFTs, and will include different tiers of “utility and digital scarcity.”
• The marketplace will run on the Polygon protocol.

The collection is set to drop in time for the 2022-2023 season.

Playing for digital dollars
The Verge reports that the new collection is reminiscent of DapperLabs’ NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day, which has been a smash since their launch. With fantasy football also moving onto the blockchain, users will probably have to drop a pretty penny to pick up players that are expected to be the best of the season — but they can also probably flip undervalued players for a pretty profit if they start to play amazingly.

But for the players themselves, the inclusion of the NFL Player’s Association guarantees that they’ll see some of that money.