If you love collectibles and blockchain technology, you’re going to love this new baseball collectible game on the Ethereum Network. Users can buy their own collectibles, level them up by playing games, and trade or sell them with other users on the network. The decentralized app (dApp) by Lucid Sight has been made possible through a licensing deal with Major League Baseball (MLB). While some baseball fans might be slightly confused by the move, attendance at games has been steadily falling following wave after wave of bad weather fronts across the US – forcing fans to stay home. This has had a noticeable financial impact on teams, so they’re clearly looking to emerging fintech to help make a digital-friendly future for baseball.
The Evolution of Baseball
New technology is helping sports all around the globe evolve and thrive. For example, video assistant refereeing (VAR) at the football World Cup has helped the game remain fair – and created arguable one of the best World Cup tournaments to date. There is no hiding the fact attendance numbers are down in baseball, which translates into fewer sales in the team stores and less kids going to watch games. These factors are all bad for baseball, especially when you consider the sizeable overheads teams have on players wages. Turning to crypto is the next natural step for baseball, and by placing the MLB on the blockchain it can start adapting its revenue streams to a more digitally-driven society.
In fact, MLB has been looking to get into the world of crypto for quite some time. Kenny Gersh – MLB’s executive vice president of gaming and new business ventures – said, “We talked a long time ago about bitcoin and whether we should accept it as payment for MLB.tv and some of our other products, and we opted not to. At the end of the day we decided that isn’t our business, we’re not in the speculation business. We’re in the business of delivering baseball to fans. So, this game is a more interesting intersection of blockchain technology and what we do.”
Professional Sports Teams Turning to Crypto
Recently the Sacramento Kings announced they were starting to mine Ethereum in order to help fund charity ventures. Plus, a Turkish football team completed the first player transfer using Bitcoin back in February. Pro sports are often the early adopters of most modern technology and engineering – it’s common knowledge that road cars are offshoots of engineering marvels from the F1, NASCAR, and Rallying world.
With the adoption of crypto in these high-profile leagues and industries, it will hopefully spark the imagination of a new generation that will invest into the crypto universe. A great example of this was team USA at the Winter Olympics. Advertising on kit is prohibited, so team USA managed to leverage crypto to help raise funds for the USA Luge Foundation and avoid the tough advertising rules. Donations form a huge part of sport funding, especially in less mainstream sports like the luge. Crypto donations helped the foundation raise thousands to continue the development of participants and the sport in general.
The Modern Day Collectible
This new era of MLB collectibles brings the thrill of baseball and its collectibles into the modern world. Younger generations are less interested in trading cards and prefer technology when compared to previous generations. By modernizing the way people interact with collectibles it will hopefully attract a newer and younger audience – one that has the potential to engage with the franchise for a longer period of time.
While putting things on the blockchain – such as collectibles – is seen by some as a simple “get rich quick” scheme, the incredible success of them begs to differ. CryptoKitties – the most successful collectible dApp – has generated over $25 million in ether sales, something the MLB franchise could easy top if it catches on within the baseball community.
To get your hands on some one-of-a-kind baseball collectibles, head on over to its website and register. Free collectibles for signing up have all been redeemed, but you can still refer a friend and scoop some free goodies!
