⚽️Why sports games are so appealing for web3
Collectibility, built in scarcity and epic moments, and massive reach
Despite how nascent blockchain gaming still is, there’s a hefty list of web3-based games built on traditional sports IP. NBA Topshot, UFC Strike, NFL Rivals, Sorare. [For a summary of the latest, check out my pal, Pet’s, piece.] In addition to many other blockchain activations that leagues and teams have launched over the past few years. The sports game genre is sizable (~$10B on mobile alone) but compared to many other categories, especially globally, it isn’t the biggest money maker.
But sports games, especially those built off existing franchises, are uniquely positioned to tackle the web3 gaming world. Let’s dive into why:
Known Entities
First, the obvious: being able to leverage existing IP is typically very helpful for any game, web2 or web3. User acquisition (UA) is often easier and trust is higher when coming with a known brand in toe, even before any marketing support you might get from the IP partner. While licensed IP comes with tons of caveats and lots of baggage, it’s undeniable that a familiar logo plastered across your game and marketing means you start ahead of the curve. Web3 titles have struggled with UA, especially when they’ve lacked access to the normal distribution platforms and ad networks that traditional games have. This branding can offer a leg up.
But sports go one better. In addition to the overarching league or team branding, some sports licenses also come with the players, who themselves have followings and influence that transcend the sport or team. Think Michael Jordan; I have no idea what teams he played for or, at this point, how many sports he’s played professionally. But as an entity, I know him. Having the recognizable face—in addition to any shoutouts you might get from the athlete himself—is a big win.
This is particularly valuable in the land of web3, where interactions with your games’ items might happen outside of platforms you control. Whether it’s a secondary marketplace or social media platform, a user scrolling through a sea of images is more likely to have his eye catch on a familiar face or crest than the latest monkey JPEG.
Sports brands are also a major asset in an ecosystem that has struggled with user trust. Having items that are officially branded gives your game a leg up in that first sale, and often comes with a degree of expectation of a certain polish in the experience, making someone more likely to try the game in the first place. Those influencer athletes can also help users get over some other mental barriers to web3, since they can offer a cool factor and more trusted education about NFTs than a gamer would accept from a faceless corporation.
Tribalism Built In
One thing many NFT projects and web3 games have struggled to create is community and a driving sense of rivalry. Normally, games build up community over a number of years, and it’s part of what makes rivals to Call of Duty or Battlefield falter: it’s extremely hard to get people to start from scratch with their friend circles, clans, and allegiances.
But sports come with baked-in and often decades-long rivalries. Regional tiffs, team-on-team loathing, player hate. Nothing unites people more than enmity. When your game is able to tap into contention and in-groups that someone else established for you, you’re better able to leverage those for your own game design, monetization, and marketing. It’s much easier than fabricating tribalism, something eSports have struggled, and largely failed, to do.
These groupings are used by sports games to naturally divide up the player base and ensure contentious battles and ongoing discussion, which often results in dollars and cents driving actions behind those opinions. Look at merch for any sports team: repping your club is something folks spend lots of money on.
Scarcity is Inherent
Everything in sports is limited. Player careers are only so long, the number of games in a season are finite, the season itself only spans a handful of months. Winning moments are fleeting. And, every year, the whole thing starts over again.
While scarcity is by no means a requirement for game NFTs, it’s an extra tool. And while many NFT projects outside of games have taken heat for artificial scarcity, the real-world limited nature of sports facets gives developers aircover to implement this into their item designs.
Limited time events that coincide with game matches or seasons allows these titles to latch onto the momentum and FOMO of IRL happenings.
Collectibility is OG
Scarcity brings us to collectibility. Fortunately, sports has a long history of collectibility, with multiple item traits that developers can leverage to engender covetability and perceived value, either inherent in the gameplay itself or secondarily on the open market. Here are a few:
Player signatures: In the real world, a baseball or card with an athlete’s signature tends to command much higher prices than one without. And the good news is that some sports license asset packages come with player signatures.
Career status: Mickey Mantle rookie cards are GOAT, while other players might have items from a certain period in their career be more collectible, like their winningest season or when they joined a new club in a high-profile transfer.
Game events: Player shots and stats from major game highlights.
Trophies and cups: This speaks for itself, but if your team wins the Premier League and you’ve got NFTs with the cup, that’s pretty hot.
Beyond these traits and events, there’s basically no limit to the types of items that people see as collectible in sports. Jerseys, balls, hats, foam fingers, used towels, you name it. This offers devs tons of options for in-game item types and really novel gameplay.
What about an irreverent mobile game where you play the waterboy who, after every game, runs around to scoop up any and all items he can to sell and trade them with rabid fans in the parking lot? I could see a Mafia Wars-style game around that with intense battles against other water boys, stealth, and more.
Epicness Moments
Fantasy sports is a big category, and certainly a hefty portion of the web3 sports games we’ve seen to date. There’s good reason for this: being able to tie your gameplay to moments from the real events generates extra excitement, and can aid in marketing as you ride the tide of big wins.
But having gameplay directly connected with real-life games isn’t the only way to harness the benefits of IRL sports. As mentioned above, item covetability can come as a result from NFTs that are able to reflect—or maybe even dynamically update because of—real events.
When I launched a Manchester City collection at Animoca, we were lucky that they won the Premier League during the unfolding of the drops themselves. Our award card of the team lifting the cup was perhaps the first merch, globally, of that moment. Items can reflect scores or major moments without specific impact on in-game use, but these features can still serve to generate extra excitement (read: $$) for those items.
It Doesn’t End at the Game
Now this concept is very much web3 and largely untested, but something we’re seeing a growing number of teams and leagues consider. Because the world of sports is so vast— e.g. ticketing, live events, physical merch, streaming/media, video games, collectibles—there is a non-zero chance that key developers who are positioned as important partners for teams or leagues could leverage an ecosystem of utility that goes well beyond their game.
I’ve opined ad nauseam about how, in theory, a single NFT (be it game item or anything else) should be used across an infinite flywheel of core business units and interconnected partners. That’s the dream, right? This is less interoperability (i.e. my sword in game X can be taken into, and look basically the same, in game Y) and more about expanding circles of utility. Developers who are closely partnered with teams or leagues can and should be working to ensure that their in-game items have lives outside the walls of the game. Merch discount redemption or token-gated ecommerce, ticketing, access to athletes or behind the scenes benefits.
You don’t get this with web2. Whatever happens in Madden stays in Madden. What a waste. But this kind of expanded utility requires keen planning and co-marketing with the sports orgs that go beyond traditional licensing. Not impossible, but certainly extra work to realize this future that we’re all expecting.
That said, developers don’t necessarily need explicit permissions or larger partnerships to make use of the broader universe of sports NFTs. If, for example, a world cup final ticket is issued on-chain, a game developer could offer any ticket holder a free mint or unique item in their game. This is a bit harder—it means accessing the audience of ticket holders who aren’t necessarily within the developer’s marketing reach—but it’s completely doable thanks to the chain.
In fact, the early experiments in this vein are far more likely to start in this latter direction: game developers making use of other, existing sports NFTs. The reason is largely because games, de facto, start as digital, on-chain experiences. By default, users are showing up and connecting to the game with a wallet and any existing items within it. The opposite direction require heavier engineering lifts for ecommerce sites or arenas to install NFT-scanning ticketing tech, something that will take longer than the other way around.
Why would sports leagues or teams do all this? Data and loyalty. Right now, teams have very few ways to understand a single fan as he or she engages with the entire ecosystem of that sport or league. Developers who can position themselves as vital partners in a growing loyalty and consumer insights machine might find that they can do some very big, innovative things.
While I don’t play sports games, it’s heartening to see that some of these early entrants have made decent dents in the market. And sports leagues and teams aren’t slowing down in their web3 efforts (NDA-ed through the wazoo on this, but stay tuned). For developers looking to tackle web3 gaming and who have IP money in toe, this genre unlocks a lot of options for design, monetization, and utility and shouldn’t go overlooked.
Love this!