🔊 NFT Ticketing Is Taking Off 🚀

Welcome to The Hype Report where we break down the latest news, stories & insights around sports & web3.

Here's What You Need To Know This Week 📝

• Sports Illustrated Announces NFT Ticketing Platform Called Box Office 🎟️

• Pokes With A Purpose Is Bringing Digital Collectibles To Oklahoma State Fans 🤠

• Trace Launches An AI-Powered Video Highlights Service For Youth Soccer ⚽

• Founder Feature Of The Week 📰 

• Quick Hype 🎯

Let's Dive Into It 🤿

Sports Illustrated Announces NFT Ticketing Platform Called Box Office 🎟️

When you think about how NFTs can solve real-world issues, ticketing is way up there.

Sports Illustrated, the longtime sports publisher, is stepping in to help solve it.

This week they announced their NFT ticketing marketplace called "Box Office" in partnership with Ethereum software firm ConsenSys, the company behind the crypto wallet MetaMask. 

The ticketing platform will be built on the Polygon network, an Ethereum scaling tool.

They say Box Office will be:

"The world's first complete NFT ticket service, allowing event owners, organizers, and promoters to use Box Office to build further engagement opportunities into tickets, such as highlights, collectibles and offers through a feature called 'Super Ticket.'"

David Lane, SI Tickets' CEO, said in a press release that the goal of the marketplace from the jump was to "disrupt the primary ticket market."

Lane also stated:

“Blockchain is the future of ticketing, and now owners, promoters, hosts, and attendees have access to an advanced ticketing experience that transforms the antiquated barcode into engaging and collectible content."

In addition to entry, event organizers can also use the tickets to provide photo and video highlights, collectibles, personalized messages, promotional offers, and loyalty rewards to engage fans.

Box Office also has a 20% lower fee structure than Eventbrite and fans can transfer their tickets to NFT marketplaces and other secondary ticket platforms.

The use of NFTs as tickets for live events has been pushed as a major use case for Web3 technology for a while.

A major brand like Sports Illustrated coming into the space will give the use case more momentum.

Other companies building in the space include:

• Tixologi

• TicketMint

• SeatLab

• Wicket

• YellowHeart

Brands such as Ticketmaster, SeatGeek, Stuhub, and even Marc Lore and Arod's new startup Jump are in the mix for NFT ticketing as well, but Box Office expects their platform to be "the entry point for millions to be able to enter blockchain and get their first NFT ticket.”

Pokes With A Purpose Is Bringing Digital Collectibles To Oklahoma State Fans 🤠

Pokes With A Purpose (PWAP), a non-profit organization that helps student-athletes use their name, image, and likeness to raise awareness for causes, recently announced the upcoming release of an innovative line of digital sports collectibles for Oklahoma State University (OSU) fans.

The one-of-a-kind digital collectibles will feature current OSU athletes, experiences, and legends.

The collectible enables athletes to capitalize on the name, image, and likeness, while also providing holders with the ability to verify ownership, track authenticity, and transfer ownership securely.

Most importantly, in my opinion, the athletes are able to receive a portion of the net revenue from the sale of the collectibles at the initial and subsequent resales.

To launch the digital collectibles, PWAP has partnered with industry leader Alpha Trend, a web3 technology organization.

They will build the launchpad technology for the digital collectibles and an AI-driven growth recommendation dashboard.

Fortress Blockchain Technologies, an industry leader in blockchain payment systems and security, will provide the secured wallet payment system and infrastructure.

They plan to launch the first collections in late May.

Several other universities have also launched digital collectibles or NFT platforms for student-athletes in some form including:

• BYU

• St. John's University

• University of Michigan

• Clemson University

• Gonzaga University

• West Virginia University

Trace Launches PlayerFocus, An AI-Powered Video Highlights Service For Youth Soccer ⚽

Trace, which is the only company that automatically delivers individual player highlights, recently announced the launch of PlayerFocus.

PlayersFocus is an industry-first AI-powered video highlights service for athletes.

The technology can capture and deliver the video exactly how parents want to watch it – a single focus on their son or daughter.

With Trace’s AI technology, PlayerFocus tracks, spotlights, and zooms in on each player for an enhanced post-game viewing experience.

After the game, each player can be sent a playlist of their own highlights.

With other solutions, players, parents, or coaches have to potentially spend hours editing raw footage.

Essentially, they're providing a much better way to watch highlights and access them.

How It Works:Parents and coaches purchase the equipment from Trace and can sign up for PlayerFocus just as they would sign up for streaming services like Netflix or AppleTV+.

And just like those streaming services, the highlights are available on-demand, 24/7.

They offer a range of flexible pricing options with highlight subscriptions to eliminate the friction that comes from needing the whole team to agree.

This also gives access to a wider range of parents, and teams.

CEO of Trace, David Lokshin on PlayerFocus:

"As parents, we love our kids and want to celebrate their wins and learn from their losses together. Even more, we want to return to that emotion that we felt inside on that amazing goal or that special play. With this new offering, we are making it easier and more affordable than ever for parents to access their son or daughter’s highlights. They can enjoy watching the game, knowing that every play is captured."

Coaches can easily search each player’s playlist and quickly find the most teachable moments while parents can seamlessly create and share their children's highlights saving a ton of time in the process.

This new service is laying the foundation for extending Trace’s capabilities beyond soccer as they move forward on their vision of revolutionizing the way we capture and relive the most important memories of our life.

Founder Of The Week 📰 

Most people know her as Mscryptomom on Twitter, but Brenda Gentry is quietly becoming one of the top experts in web3.

She originally got into the space during the pandemic and has since grown a major community leveraging Twitter.

Currently, she's building a web3 sports betting platform called Bundles Bets and has ambitions to combat companies such as DraftKings & Fanduel.

In this conversation, we discuss what she did to differentiate herself and build a Twitter following, how she started Bundles Bets, and her BTC & ETH price predictions for the next several years.

Check it out below:

Quick Hype 🎯

T-Mobile has admitted nine tech startups into a new accelerator designed to advance the development and commercialization of 5G innovations for the sports industry.

How business leaders can benefit from the impact of technology in the sporting world.

How the African tech boom is transforming its sports industry.

Vechain partners with Internazionali BNL d'Italia to create an NFT-integrated championship trophy.

SportsTechX releases their Global Sportstech Ecosystem Report 2023. It's the first comprehensive overview of the Global SportsTech Ecosystem.

Thanks for reading this week.

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Talk to you again next week,

Malcolm

This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not financial or business advice in any capacity. The information shared is my thoughts & opinions and does not represent the opinions of any other person, business, entity, or sponsor.

The contents of this newsletter also should not be used in any public or private domain without the author's express permission. The contents of this newsletter should not be used for any commercial activity, for example, research report, consultancy activity, or paywalled article, without the author's express permission.