Even Major League Baseball Is Moving Into NFTs…

If I wasn’t already working a few jobs, I might consider this… 

Major League Baseball, it turns out, is on the hunt for someone who can take charge of the league’s new effort at moving into NFTs and the metaverse. They want a worker who can execute strategic partnerships to expand the league’s digital portfolio in NFTs, metaverse, wearable technology, and AR/VR offerings, according to a LinkedIn post. 

I mean (raises hand), that’s sorta my world every day. I consult for a blockchain sports-NFT company, and in my new role as CEO of a European blockchain’s NFT division, I’m hammering out a plan to bring a German Bundesliga soccer team onto the blockchain in a pretty cool way. 

Alas, I don’t have the bandwidth to add baseball to the mix, and I’m pretty sure MLB would want a full-time desk-jockey in the league’s NYC HQ. Not for me. 

But those last four paragraphs are really more about what MLB is up to than the inside-baseball details of a new job posting. 

First, NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are one-off, one-of-a-kind crypto tokens that can represent ownership of everything from a piece of digital art to a portion of a business, not unlike a share of stock.  

I’ve been saying for a while now that sports will be the path by which the next 100 million people join the cryptosphere and begin to engage with NFTs and the metaverse. This MLB job posting is just another proof point building that case. 

Earlier this year, MLB released a series of NFTs through a partnership with a company called Candy Digital. But that’s small beer relative to the bigger crypto opportunity that sports represents…and which will be a grand-slam home run for investors. 

I want you to imagine this: Game day…you head to the ballpark for the final game in the championship series. You approach the stadium and open a crypto wallet on your phone and pull up your digital ticket for the game. As the ticket-taker scans the barcode, your ticket magically morphs into a one-of-a-kind collectible NFT specially designed just for this playoff game. It’s instantly tradeable on the secondary market, where you see that some of the rare versions are already selling for several hundred dollars or more. 

But you got lucky! 

Your ticket morphed into an ultra-rare NFT…and it’s giving you post-game access to the winning teams’ locker-room, where you will also collect a game-used ball signed by every member of the team, as well as a limited-edition, one-of-one collection of NFTs for each player on the winning team. 

Now, apply that to every sport in the land…professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Throw in all the major college sports, too. Don’t forget all the professional soccer leagues all over the word. Japanese baseball. Indian premier league cricket. Aussie rules football and professional rugby leagues. 

There’s the World Cup, the Olympics…the list just goes on and on. 

It’s a gargantuan number of sports fans across nearly every corner of the world. All snapping up collectible NFTs. All venturing into various metaverses to follow their favorite stars, their favorite teams, their favorite leagues.  

Imagine the kid I saw in Bangkok a few weeks ago who was kicking a soccer ball in a park with his dad and wearing a sky-blue Manchester City jersey. I am going to assume that kid loves Man City, in the English Premier League. When the league has its metaverse up and running one day, he’ll be able to log in and virtually walk into Etihad Stadium in Manchester, England, and watch the game play out around him in 3D virtual/augmented reality in his bedroom somewhere in Bangkok. 

Blockchain technology opens up the world in ways never before available. 

It’s one of the reasons I am so bullish on owning the blockchain networks that are going to make all of this possible, including Ethereum and Solana. Yes, those cryptocurrencies are down bad at the moment. But the best opportunities always arise in the depths of a bear market, when no one cares anymore. That’s pretty much where we are today. 

The fewer people who care, the happier I am.  

Because when you have organizations like Major League Baseball hiring people to build new NFT and metaverse divisions, well that tells you we’re soon going to see tens and hundreds of millions of people start to care again. 

I’ll be there, like a ticket-taker, gobbling up my profits as all those people rush back into the game.