Not all that glitters is gold, and not all new revenue streams that major U.S. sports leagues explore are profitable - but this one seems to be. The partnership of Major League Baseball (MLB) with the Candy Digital NFT marketplace has increased matchday revenue and fan engagement, and allowed marketing to reach younger, more digital crowds.
Web3 also stands to win from this partnership. According to Scott Lawin, CEO of the Candy Digital sports collectibles marketplace, during the 2024 season, his company expects to onboard between 250,000 and 500,000 new users to the NFT ecosystem by selling them sports-related digital assets.
Candy Digital has been the baseball league's "official NFT partner" since launching its first Major League Baseball NFT marketplace ahead of the 2022 season. Before this year's season had even started, Candy launched the first drop of the MLB Showstopper ICON series, a digital collection of the league's 43 most notable players, which sold out in just three minutes.
However, the real victory for Web3 comes not from limited collection items but from the commemorative season tickets available to fans who attend the games.
MLB Chief Operations and Strategy Officer Chris Marinak explains, "as soon as you checked into the game within the Ballpark app, you'd get an email to go get your commemorative NFT ticket." The interaction of game attendees, which is often the first with digital collectibles, makes for easy and free marketing on social media for the league while contributing to onboarding new users to Web3.
For Lawin, the tickets are a golden gate to the decentralized web. He says it is "the most effective way to introduce someone to the space because this is someone that is expressing their fandom by purchasing a ticket and going to a game. And they get an opportunity to get a digital asset and it records that experience."
While fans still have to purchase a traditional ticket to get into a game, the Candy Digital CEO predicts that further down the road, the "access ticket and the NFT ticket will become one."
By offering memorabilia and experiences that are more up-to-date with the online age, digital collectibles present a new revenue stream for leagues, professional athletes, clubs, and teams (especially those with a robust international fanbase) at little cost.
For now, MLB is offering commemorable tickets as "free mints." As devoted fans and passionate collectors find their way onto the realms of Web3 with special tickets and unique collections, digital collectibles open the way to increase matchday and non-matchday revenue. For the decentralized internet, sports can onboard millions of users who bring in the passion and willingness to discover, interact, and create in the space.
