How NFT’s Are Creating a Sports Memorabilia Boom
DIGITAL MEMORABILIA ON THE RISE
Some sports fans are beginning to swap baseball cards for league-backed digital tokens, making the sports NFT market a multi-billion-dollar business. NFTs have gained sharp attention in major sports categories like basketball, including NBA Top Shot, and football in the case of Sorare. They are used in the forms of memorabilia, trading cards, sport kits, digital collectibles, and even ticketing.
For fans who want to buy a historic sports moment, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) may be an enticing option. The report from Deloitte Global, a market research and consultancy firm estimated the sports memorabilia market size at US$26 billion in 2021. Non-fungible token (NFT) sports collectibles are currently estimated at US$1.4 billion and are forecast to reach US$92 billion by 2032.
basketball memorabilia nfts
In 2022, the most prevalent application of NFTs in the sports industry will be the sale of limited-edition video clips of sporting moments or player cards. The value of each NFT will depend on the prominence of the athlete, the significance of the event, any additional content included within the token, and high demand.
NFTs encapsulate the very essence of owning and trading collectibles. They provide tangible ways to celebrate world-class athletes, whether in the form of video clips, digital players cards, or signed autographs. NFTs provide technological innovation to deliver new ways of driving long-term emotional connections between athletes and fans.
lebron james NFT trading card
According to Chris Ivy of Heritage Actions, sports collectibles is perhaps the strongest financial market that exists right now. "The global pandemic added rocket fuel to the collectibles market -- a combination of the restriction upon spending on other luxuries like travel and fine dining, and the growing acceptance of the legitimacy of collectibles around the globe as an investment vehicle," Ivy says. "We've seen more million-dollar sales in the past year than in the twenty years preceding it."
The most expensive piece of memorabilia, the original Olympic Games Manifesto sold at Sotheby's for $8.8 million in 2019. But trading cards remain the driving force behind most of the astronomical numbers. Since February of 2020, there have been at least a dozen $1 million card sales, including six cards that sold for over $3.75 million.
Because of the rarity of these items, fraud is a huge concern within the industry. Consumers are looking for ways to authenticate their luxury memorabilia in the digital space. Provenance and authenticity are a necessity in the resale market and NFTs allow consumers to obtain second-hand sales. Created by The ORDRE Group the Authentique App creates a synergistic approach to authenticating the physical product with a digital twin (non-fungible token). Authentique uses visual recognition software rather than RFID tagging to create an NFT of the physical product during the point-of-purchase. Because the digital twin lives on the blockchain, people are able to verify their physical and digital products with ease of mind.
The digital landscape is expanding and allowing people more ways to be immersed in the Metaverse. Luxury items are becoming digitized and consumers are experiencing a new wave of buying luxury items. With new technologies on the horizon, the Authentique App is leading the way for consumers to buy and sell digital twins of physical products.
