How Are NFTs Amplifying Fantasy Sports?

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Here’s an explainer on applicability of NFTs in the fantasy sports - how Crypto and Blockchain games are stepping in and how you can turn you’re gaming hours into an investment!

Jeremy: You’re welcome.

Mom: What should I be thanking you for?

Jeremy: I just repaid the twenty bucks I owed you…in Bitcoin.

Mom: I don’t know anything about Bitcoin!

Jeremy: In that case, it was forty bucks. (ZITS, by Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman)

Operating cryptocurrencies in their current form can be a confusing experience, where users have to complete a series of operations to achieve an outcome. They have to buy bitcoins on an exchange, download and set up a wallet, send bitcoins to that wallet, find a marketplace or exchange to trade in, complete a transaction, and track it on the local block explorer.

NFTs vs. Blockchain

The use of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) in conjunction with fantasy sports vouches for the uniqueness of Blockchain Technology. Blockchain is important for tracing and tracking NFTs through smart contracts, stored on Blockchain. They can be used along with traditional contracts to enforce rights.

Indian and International NFT Fantasy Sports Platforms

We’ll get through the underlying skepticism, and why it has become prime focus in on-demand service industry: Fantasy Sports Platforms in India like Dream 11, MPL (mobile Premier League), RummyCircle, Premier League – Football, Halaplay, CricPlay, 11 Wickets, FanFight, BalleBaazi, Fancy 11, and International Fantasy Sports Platforms like DraftKings, NFL Fantasy, Sportech, and Fantasy Feud etc.

What Are NFT Games?

NFT games are Blockchains to prove ownership of specific gaming assets. Two years earlier, NFT artworks were almost explosive, and now Blockchain enthusiasts are jumping onto the NFT Gaming bandwagon!  NFT Games Examples: Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, Gods Unchained, DeFi Kingdoms, Splinterlands, Sorare – Fantasy Football, Treeverse, Bridgeworld (TreasureDAO), Star Atlus, Parallel, Wizards and Dragons: Reborn, and many more.

NFT games use blockchain technology to do three things:

  • Prove ownership and history of ownership – If there is a “pickaxe” – (a weapon in Minecraft), its ownership is tracked on Blockchain. Whoever owns that axe will continue owning it until it is sold or traded.
  • Provable NFT – Assets maintained as NFTs are created in defined quantities and information is stored on the Blockchain database. If there are 50 pickaxes, they will always be 50 in number. The developer cannot just go about and change the defined number.
  • Assets secured with Blockchain are immutable – All assets are unchanging and immutable. If this pickaxe is with gold finish, it will always be gold. Someone cannot just go about and change it to silver.
  • Blockchain is decentralized – No single player can own the blockchain – it is available for every single player to see and use.

What Do NFTs Mean for Gaming Specifically?

In a traditional game, players buy the game and collect gears, weapons, skins, cards, and other items. They reside in the inventory in the game. Those items go away when you stop playing. All the time, money, and efforts go in vain once you quit e.g. Minecraft. This is because, even when you collected or purchased those items, you don’t actually own them.

In an NFT game, you have to buy the game and collect gears, weapons, skins, and cards. But the key difference is, that you immutably own those items of which there is a limited quantity and the item itself can exist outside the game. Players can bring those items and use them across platforms in another game. Plus, they can bring those items to the real-world marketplace and sell them in dollars. So if you decide to play the game and sell all your NFT gaming assets, for real-world dollars, and if you got in early and held them for a really long time, odds are that they will increase in value since you acquired them.

What Do NFT Games Allow You to Do?

Players invest time and money into securing NFT items within a game. They hold those items within their inventory or NFT wallet, and overtime as more people join the game, the demand for those items goes up and can sell them for more money, for real-world dollars. But this process involves risks. Here they have an option to never play the game and still make money from NFT items. In such cases, a game developer releases items such as weapons, or collectibles, before those items are playable in the game, or before the game is even released.

NFT’s in Fantasy Sports

Gaming has become a mainstream source of entertainment for tech savvy youngsters in India where popularity of fantasy sports is increasing by the day. Here, cricket, football, kabaddi fans feel an urge to stay connected and engaged while they are not in the field witnessing game for real.

Online gaming platforms for Fantasy Sports enable participants to draft, sign, manage, and trade professional athletes in building their own teams and compete against other team owners in either head-to-head weekly leagues or season long Rotisserie Style scoring. These are skill based games that gives the players the real-world thrill of sporting events. Points in a Fantasy Game are awarded according to a player’s performance in real life game.

Now we have more than 170% gamers from tier-III cities and towns as compared to 2021. FICCI-EY report also predicts the India fantasy sports to grow with a CAGR of 32% and is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2022.

NFT’s as Gaming Tokens

NFT gaming tokens carry value and drive the in-game economy. Gaming tokens are used to create/upgrade weapons or armour within the game. Combine multiple in-game creatures for creating new creatures with new attributes. Play the game to acquire more tokens and access exclusive in-game tournaments, locations, or customization options.

How Can You Turn Your Gaming Hours Into An Investment?

To buy land in Decentraland (digital asset), you need to have MANA (digital money). To get MANA, you need to buy it at a cryptocurrency exchange, and as such, the token has value. Like money, more tokens you have, you can make more purchases in the game. Consequently, you become richer by selling these tokens in the marketplace.

What Best Play-To-Earn/Play-To-Win NFT Games Are Out Now?

It depends upon how the game developer decides to tokenize the game elements and how those items are made available. Do you earn them via skill or do you just buy them through a store, are they just available?

What Are Sports NFTs And How Do They Work?

We can understand one NFT as one coin, which we call as a digital asset as it does not have a physical presence. A series of NFT’s can represent a range of digital assets for books, music, art canvas, signature, voice, eyes, or anything you can imagine, anything you wish to secure for infinity. NFT technology maintains a record of the assets, their owners, and related transactions in a distributed ledger (a file that maintains accounts). In most of the cases it is Ethereum Blockchain.

Sports NFTs are a crossover between sports cards and fantasy sports. There is approximately $30 billion market opportunity for existing fantasy/sports card players. Ultimate NFT, NBA TopShot and Sorare raised $680 million or its fantasy football (soccer) platform. NFL All Day and FanCraze (cricket) are joining in to further accelerate NFT Fantasy Sports Gaming. Major League Soccer (MLS) created teams focussed on three areas: increasing the league’s fan base, driving revenue, and bringing in new and emerging technologies.

Nonfungible tokens can even buy you an unforgettable sporting moment, which could let you relive the memories for times immemorial. NFTs for sports media will generate more than US$2 billion in transactions in 2022 according to Deloitte Global. And by the end of 2022, an expected 4-5 million sports fan globally are predicted to purchase or been gifted an NFT collectible. All this activity will spur an interest in sports, a wider NFT marketplace audience, including a spark for digital art being one of the top five valuable sales of which had generated over US$100 million (by August 2021).

Suaving With The Ever Expanding Scope of NFTs in Fantasy Sports

Blockchain games incorporate many innovative aspects with the help of native cryptocurrency tokens. e.g. Decentraland makes use of MANA token, Axie Infinity makes use of AXS token. Most of the Blockchain tokens are used to create NFTs (in-game assets). These are typically based on Ethereum or other Blockchain with smart-contract functionality, and can be sold in secondary markets/NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare, Foundation, AtomicMarket, Myth market, BakerySwap, Knownorigin, Enjin Marketplace, Portion, Async Art, Nifty Gateway, Decentraland, Zora, Mintable, etc.

Users play NFT games for earning a bit along with a dash of entertainment. Your NFT asset has value in real world because it is linked to a cryptocurrency. It works like shares in a game. You can create and sell characters on a blockchain and earn real money. But the value of blockchain tokens can fluctuate. It is not mandatory to have an initial investment every time you play an NFT game. Some of the best games require zero financial commitment to play.

Features in a Fantasy Sports App

App User Panel

  • User Registration
  • User Login
  • Home screen
  • Search
  • Filter
  • View Player Statistics
  • Create User Profile
  • Edit User Profile
  • My Winnings/My Offers
  • Create New/Join Leagues and Tournaments
  • Select Tours(Upcoming tournaments/leagues)
  • Payment mode for subscription
  • Create Team Page, Players based on skills/ positions/ formats/ points
  • Check Reward Points
  • Contest Listings
  • Join Contest
  • Create your own contest
  • My Contest
  • Payment Mode
  • See Transactions
  • Invite and Earn

Web Administrator Panel

  • Admin Login
  • Dashboard
  • User Manager
  • Manage Matches
  • Manage Games Category
  • Contest Manager
  • Revenue Management
  • Manage Payment
  • Manage Reward Points
  • Manage Cash Bonus
  • Manage Bank Withdraw Request
  • CMS Management
  • CRM Integration
  • Points and Results Management
  • Manage Payment/Transactions
  • Manage Fantasy Points
  • Manage Notifications and Requests
  • Players, Players Assignments, and Leagues Management
  • View and Manage list of Users, Payment, Transaction, Win history
  • Notification and request management
  • Manage leagues, player and player assignment
  • Manage lists of users, transaction along with the history

Additional Features

  • Landing Screen
  • League Arena
  • User Dashboard
  • Admin Dashboard
  • Manage User Accounts
  • Manage Contests
  • Manage Reports
  • Dashboard Analytics
  • Live Group Chat
  • Share on Social Media
  • Various Sports Integrations
  • Live Commentary Feed
  • App User Activity News Feed
  • Live Games Photo Gallery
  • ESPN API integration for Player Statistics
  • Live Games Video Streaming
  • Leaderboard
  • Coupons/ Offers Management/ Manage Static HTML Pages & Blogs
  • Subscription Payment Modes
  • Live Match Scores
  • In-App advertising
  • Push Notifications
  • Multi-Language Support
  • Live Chat
  • Real-Time Analytics
  • GPS Location Tracking
  • Custom Main Reminder System
  • Cryptocurrency Payment Integration
  • Loyalty Programs

Innovative Features

  • Chatbot Implementation
  • Blockchain Backed Payments
  • Machine Learning for Intutive Predictions

Technology Stack to Develop a Fantasy NFT Sports App

  • Database: MongoDB, MySQL, HBase, Cassandra, PostGress, MailChimp integration
  • Frontend:
    • For web – PHP, ANGULAR, REACTJS
    • For App – Android, iOS, Flutter, Ionic, React Native, JQuery, Angular JS, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, Bootstrap
  • Backend: PHP, NODEJS
  • API: For sports data – Entity sports, GoalServe, Cricket API, RapidAPI.com, Sportsmonks, Entitysports, Cricinfo
  • Real-time Analytics: Hadoop, Spark, Bigdata, Apache Flink, CISCO, IBM
  • Payment: BrainTree, PayPal, Stripe, PayUMoney, e-banking
  • Cloud Environment: AWS, Azure, Salesforce, Google Cloud, Cloud Foundry
  • Push Notifications: Twilio, Amazon SNS, Push.io, MAP, Urban Airship, ADPush 

What Are The Best Ways To Monetize Your NFT Fantasy Sports App?

  • Advertisements
  • In-app Purchases
  • Participation Fees
  • Sponsorship Rights
  • Collaboration with Sporting Leagues 

How Much Does it Cost to Build a Fantasy Sports NFT App?

Consider the location of your development team, experience of your development team, app complexity, platform (iOS/Android/Web) as you estimate the cost of NFT Fantasy App. Average approximate cost to create an NFT based App for Fantasy Sports comes around – $30K – $50K for Android, iOS. (Rough Estimate)

Conclusive: Marketplace for Fantasy Sports NFT

You don’t need to become a world-class NFT game investor tomorrow, but there is immense value in understanding how an NFT enabled game works so that when that killer game comes along, you can capitalize on it and actually make a return on the time and money that you invest into a game. Some of the top NFT games out in the market right now are Axie infinity, Blankos Block Party, Cryptobeasts, Gods unchained, Splinterlands, and Big Time.

Stride along the fantasy of NFT Gaming with us. Catch up with our experts for a quick feature and cost estimate on Fantasy Sports NFT. The best is yet to arrive!

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About Author
Neeti Kotia

Neeti Kotia

Neeti Kotia is a technology journalist who seeks to analyze the advancements and developments in technology that affect our everyday lives. Her articles primarily focus upon the business, social, cultural, and entertainment side of the technology sector.

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