Another day, another NFT/metaverse announcement – this time, it’s the AFL.
The Australian Football League (AFL) has this week signed a five-year deal with Be Media (as of this week, owned by Animoca Brands, the same company that we yesterday reported had worked with metal lords Slipknot on their Knotverse metaverse project).
The deal with the AFL, however, will “bring the power of NFTs and the open metaverse to the AFL and AFL Women’s (AFLW), and will launch the AFL Mint initiative”.
In a statement, the AFL said partnering allows it to “leverage” Animoca Brands’ Web3 strategy, planning, NFT product delivery and execution. Whatever that really means we’ll never know, but it means the AFL doesn’t have to build all of this stuff itself. Animoca Brands has a bunch of other sporting codes on board already, including NBA TopShots, ICC Fancraze, MotorGP Ignite and UFC Strikeforce.
Back the sort-of tangible part of this announcement, the AFL Mint. The AFL Mint will act as the official marketplace to collect licensed AFL NFTs. It will offer exclusive AFL items the league says will showcase “iconic moments, spectacular highlights and champion players”.
“Our aim is to continue to bring fans new ways of engaging in Australian football. By partnering with Animoca Brands, we will be playing in a digital space that is only getting bigger,” AFL chief Gillon McLachlan said.
“We are officially entering the Web3 space and excited to immortalise moments in time across our AFL and AFLW competitions.”
The AFL is no stranger to a blockchain, so this NFT plunge isn’t too much of a surprise. In January, the league signed a five-year deal with Crypto.com, making the site the ‘official cryptocurrency exchange’ and ‘official cryptocurrency trading platform’ of AFL and AFLW.