DraftKings is a well-known Boston-based sports betting company. It recently hinted at developing an in-house NFT collection.
DraftKings’ launch of the NFT drop will coincide with the 2022 Men’s Basketball Tournament. It is a month-long event that will conclude on April 04, 2022.
DraftKings To Unveil Its First NFT Collection
No other space on the sports calendar could have beaten this season. Matt Kalish, a Co-Founder of DraftKings, stated that the season was chosen because nothing could match the drama and spectacle of March’s college basketball tournament.
The part of the Primetime NFT series that is planned to drop during the season is titled 2022 College Hoops Collection.
This has also set a pace for the future launches of the company. Beth Beiriger, the Senior Vice President of DraftKings, said that there was a possibility that the company could launch its upcoming NFT collectibles alongside NBA playoffs and the Super Bowl.
It’s not just the launches of NFT collectibles, but DraftKings has also set the trend for crypto sports betting. DraftKings is using Polygon to support custom NFT drops and secondary-market transactions. Although the DraftKings Marketplace is in its beginnings, there are incredible opportunities that blockchain, NFTs, cryptocurrency, and other technologies will provide as the betting giant prepares for Web 3.0 with Polygon and possible developments in crypto sports betting. You can read article on CryptoNewsz to know more about it.
By linking non-fungible tokens to betting products, DraftKings is indeed giving a major push to the Web3 technology.
The launch of DraftKings’ NFT series follows its announcement of launching an NFT marketplace. It had unveiled its NFT marketplace in August last year. DraftKings’ NFT marketplace was launched with two major features that offered a curated list of non-fungible tokens and supported secondary market transactions.
An additional announcement was related to DraftKings’ becoming the exclusive distributor of NFT content that was based on the sports category from the NFT platform Autograph.
The launch of the NFT series by DraftKings has marked its first-ever connection of digital products to its legacy products.
Anyone who holds the 2022 College Hoops Collection NFT will become eligible to receive credits for the official website of DraftKings. The credits will enable the holder to place bets in order to enter brackets, pools, and contents across its various offerings.
Collectors of the 2022 College Hoops Collection NFT will also earn a reward after successfully holding eight collectibles. The reward includes the 9th NFT collectible that will be rewarded after the conclusion of the NCAA Championship.
On this occasion, Beth Beiriger issued a media statement saying that the company considered sports as a mainstream drive for the adoption of blockchain. She added that digital collectibles were an important part of this early adoption process.
What Else Happened?
DraftKings announced that it had partnered with Zero Hash, an infrastructure platform. The partnership allows DraftKings to stake digital assets that it holds in order to support the Polygon blockchain network.
Sandeep Nailwal, a Co-Founder of Polygon, said that DraftKings would become proactive as a validator through this partnership.
DraftKings is also opening its door to hire more talent for its Web3 space. This is a part of the company eyeing the Web3 technology. Most importantly, DraftKings is looking to hire a senior Web3 engineer who will help the company build and expand the blockchain infrastructure while ensuring its availability and scalability.
A fraud specialist would help DraftKings to conduct investigations on Cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens, and blockchain networks. Another responsibility that the fraud specialist will share is ensuring that there is no case of money laundering on the platform.