Background
The founders of a sports startup were looking to build a new platform that would sit at the core of a new virtual world for Ice Hockey players, fans, and teams.
They had identified a specific challenge within the NHL – teams were not permitted to pay players for their NIL (Naming, Image, Likeness) rights that cover assets such as autographs, social media, sponsorships, merch and so on.
This was preventing Ice Hockey players from maximising their career earnings and growing their revenue off the ice, as well as limiting their fan engagements and interactions.
Web3 technologies such as NFTs present an opportunity to safely monetise players’ NIL assets and can help them engage with the more than 2 billion global fans on a much deeper level.
The startup opened up the conversation with Protokol around developing a framework for an innovative platform that establishes new revenue streams that benefit players, hockey teams and leagues to grow the game globally.
Approach
The startup founders wished to fuse their deep knowledge of the sporting industry with Protokol’s expertise in the web3, blockchain, and NFT space.
The Protokol technical team first mapped out the tokenisation strategy for the platform. The strategy centred around five core sets of NFTs that would provide collectibles, experiences, rewards, influence, and access.
This model aimed to provide unique tokens for each facet of the platform. For example, collectibles and experience NFTs would help drive monetisation, engagement, and loyalty; by giving fans unique markers of their commitment to their team and favourite players.
Reward NFTs would serve to deliver extra value to loyal supporters by unlocking limited-time deals and discounts. Influence NFTs would confer voting rights and the opportunity to make the fans’ voices heard, and Access NFTs would help fans engage directly with their favourite sporting names through backstage access and digital ticketing.
Protokol’s design team then next laid out the potential UI/UX flow for the platform, engaging with the startup on the profile of its target audience.
This included exploring which social media platforms and streaming services the platform would need to integrate with, exploring user journeys, and how best to translate the user journey within the web3 platform for an optimised user experience.
Outcome
With Protokol’s guidance, the sports startup was able to translate their original idea into a concrete strategy for tokenisation and visualise this with initial design concepts.
On top of the intuitive design of the platform, the versatile 5 pillar NFT strategy would allow players to monetise their NIL assets and unlock several new revenue streams. It would encourage fans to engage with their favourite players on a deeper level and benefit the sport as a whole.
At the time of writing, the sports startup is looking to secure investment to start the initial development phase of the platform.
Services
To develop a solid framework upon which to base this innovative new sports platform, the startup enlisted the following Protokol services:
Web3 & Blockchain Consulting
- Web3 & Blockchain Solution Recommendation
- Tokenisation & NFT Strategy Consulting