Although it may not have seemed like the most seamless partnership in the Web3 landscape, NFTs and sports are proving to be a match made in heaven. To date, several sports-focused NFT projects have launched, with some resulting in the emergence of billion-dollar companies.

How Sports NFTs Work

Sports NFTs are a type of utility NFT that offer fans a more flexible way of collecting cards and memorabilia. In many cases, non-fungible tokens can double up as not only collectibles but fully functional games.

There are many examples of how sports NFTs can work, including:

• Trading cards that closely mimic collectible cards that have long been popular for sports like baseball, American football, basketball, and soccer.
• Highlights that give fans the power to digitally own their favorite moments in matches as video clips.
• Team kits that can include jerseys, wristbands, socks, and boots that all collectors can seek to own. Having this apparel secured on-chain as an NFT means that fans can virtually buy and sell these assets.
• Memorabilia, including autographs, trophies, and awards, can also be recreated as NFTs for fans to seek out.

Because ownership is secured on the blockchain, sports NFTs can deliver great levels of utility to surpass the capabilities traditional sports collectibles can muster. Many of the world’s most popular sport NFT projects seek to bring gamification to the act of owning these tokens.

Sports NFT Drops

Sports NFT drops are incredibly important to the genre because they keep things fresh in the ecosystem, adding greater utility to tokens and ensuring players remain engaged. A sports NFT drop can refer to a new game scheduled to launch, new NFTs arriving on a platform, or in-game freebies that are “airdropped” for players.

For scheduled content drops, there are many helpful calendars online that detail what’s coming up for NFT games, while social media can be a great place for users to access those all-important airdrops for certain games that distribute free NFTs to holders.

When it comes to accessing airdrops, typical in-game requirements tend to involve players already participating in the game and possessing either the platform’s native cryptocurrency in their embedded wallets or a certain number of NFTs already. The beauty of gaining a sports NFT airdrop is that you can access a valuable token without having to make a purchase.

With this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the five most popular sports NFT projects.

1. Sorare

Trading card and fantasy football hybrid platform Sorare can be considered a juggernaut of the Web3 space without having to qualify its credentials as a sports platform. The French company was valued at $4.3 billion at the last count and recently secured a reported £30 million deal to gain licensing rights for the English Premier League.

Sorare taps into sports fans’ love for themed trading cards and provides them with utility as NFTs. Each game week, players can use their player NFTs to create five-a-side teams and compete to win prizes based on their players’ real-world performances.

With three million global players, Sorare grew extensively in 2022, reaching new partnerships with the NBA and MLB to introduce licensed basketball and baseball versions of its game, respectively.

The game even features a free-to-play format with “common” cards, which aren’t recorded on the blockchain but can provide users with a pathway to winning their first NFTs and competing for top players and cash prizes further down the line. Furthermore, many assets are listed on the platform’s built-in marketplace and externally on leading NFT exchanges like Opensea.

With different scarcities opening the door for different levels of prizes, Sorare’s most sought-after cards can rack up eye-watering prices too. In fact, of the top 26 most expensive soccer NFTs ever sold, Sorare cards take up 18 on the list, with the most expensive, a 1/1 unique Erling Haaland bringing $687,000 at auction.

2. NBA Top Shot

Taking a different approach, NBA Top Shot gives fans the power to own their favorite moments in basketball. Focusing fully on the NBA, Top Shot enables users to access official highlight videos from matches as digital collectibles that can be bought, sold, or traded within the site’s sprawling marketplace.

There’s plenty more to come from Top Shot’s cutting-edge concept, and being one of the most accessible marketplaces for collectors without any requirement for cryptocurrency purchases, there’s certainly a lot that other NFT sports platforms can learn from the project.

3. Autograph.io

Launched by American football icon Tom Brady, Autograph.io is a sports NFT marketplace that enables users to buy and trade their very own digital limited edition sports collectibles that are signed by some of the world’s most famous athletes like Brady himself, Tiger Woods, Devin Booker, Coco Gauff, Derek Jeter, and Sabrina Ionescu.

The artworks associated with the limited edition collections are striking, making Autograph.io a one-stop shop for digital sports collectors.

4. NFL All Day

Coming from NBA Top Shot creators, Dapper Labs, NFL All Day is a platform that empowers users to buy and trade their favorite American football moments as NFTs.

In NFL All Day, the leading NFT currency is “Moments,” which come in the form of licensed video highlights that collectors can buy and sell as they please. These moments come in various types and tiers, all equipped with their own digital serial numbers that guarantee authenticity and ownership history.

Because of the addition of serial numbers, different cards can become rarer based on the type of serial number they have. Early additions or final additions are considered more valuable, while serial numbers corresponding to player jerseys are usually more sought after among collectors on the All Day Marketplace.

5. Ultimate Champions

Ultimate Champions is another game that offers a trading card and fantasy football format for a variety of sports. With an easier entry into NFTs from the platform’s free-to-play game, Ultimate Champions has enjoyed plenty of early success following its launch in mid-2022.

As a more unique element for the Web3 game, the platform launched its own cryptocurrency as an in-game token, $CHAMP. Equipped with a user-friendly and ever-evolving interface and some major licensing deals with major football teams like Arsenal in the Premier League and Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga, along with basketball’s Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, there seems to be plenty more to come for Ultimate Champions.

Looking to the Future of Sports NFTs

NFTs have resonated heavily with sports fans seeking to continue collecting memorabilia in a more digital environment. However, because of the shared love of nostalgia and collectibles among sports fans, the union between non-fungible tokens and various sports around the world has plenty of room for further growth.

As we continue to grow into the age of Web3, we’ll likely see more advanced use cases emerge between football and NFTs, and it’s likely that we’ll even see the emergence of sports NFT video games in the mid-term future.

With this in mind, there is plenty for sports fans and NFT collectors alike to be excited about over the coming years.