Weekly Web3 Recap 14/09/2024

Thanks to all of you 455 readers who are exploring the intersection of Web3 with sports and business. I appreciate every single one of you. If you are not yet a subscriber, feel free to subscribe right away - thank you ??

Welcome back to Web3 Biz n' Sports where we take a look at the most important news that happened at the intersection of Web3 with business and sports last week ??

In today's episode we will talk about NFL's new Roblox adventure, a Web3 loyalty program for the world's biggest sport, real-life commerce in digital worlds and Forbes' Web3 loyalty plans.

Let's dive into this ??

?? NFL Roblox licensing deal

The NFL has already been involved in a few experiences and activations on the platform. They've launched Super NFL Tycoon, the successor of NFL Tycoon, ahead of the Super Bowl LVII in early 2023. It's not a simulator game such as madden but rather interpreted a popular Roblox category. Super NFL Tycoon focuses more on managing a team, with some role-playing game mechanics.

The league was also involved in Saweetie's Super Bowl Concert which happened in a collaboration with Intuit in Warner Music Group's "Rhythm City".

Within their Super NFL Tycoon experience the NFL also partnered with Nickelodeon as part of their NFL Nickmas and for the Super Bowl LVIII campaign that involved Spongebob IP.

Last week the NFL announced another move on Roblox. They've partnered with the already existing game "Ultimate Football". The licensing deal involves a new name for the game, "NFL Universe Football", all 32 official NFL teams, uniforms and more.

?? My thoughts on it:

NFL's VP of Gaming, Ed Kiang, has stated the following: "When you look at Roblox, we love how engaging the platform is. It's a great way to find the next generation of NFL fans. Female fans, international fans - it's just a great platform for the NFL."

So it should be no surprise that the league is expanding on the platform. But why is this specific move so interesting for the NFL? Ultimate Football has 10x more visits than their Super NFL Tycoon. It's one if not the most popular American Football games on Roblox.

Consequently, this can really have a positive impact on the NFL's presence on the platform. What's even more important it can help build more and deeper relationships with their next generation of fans. Considering that this is a licensing deal, it will probably have some numbers attached to it too.

?? OneFootball Club

The football media app has announced to release a Web3 based loyalty earlier this year. This was accompanied with first activities where interested early users were able to do tasks, get "Balls" for it and also "bet" on EURO matches.

Now they've finally released the OneFootball Club in their app. Fans can simply join it in the app, earn XP, badges, rewards etc.

Plus, OneFootball has also attached an ID-layer to the proposition, enabling fans to get their '.football'-username onchain. For the football industry this could be quite an interesting thing considering that especially the 99% of fans outside the stadium are hardly known. This open ID-layer could help unify the fan journey and making fandom interoperable - with all the challenges that come with it.

Currently, the OneFootball Club feature is only available in Italy and Great Britain. We also don't know which parts of the loyalty proposition are onchain. Link

If you want to read more insights, get to know what the ones responsible for this have to say and dive a bit more into possible problems that could occur when bringing the loyalty points themselves are onchain, I really recommend reading the latest edition of the Sporting Crypto newsletter. Link

?? Roblox ?? Shopify

The social gaming platform has announced a partnership with ecommerce giant Shopify. While the platform has been testing connecting in-game with real-life commerce, this is their first larger scale approach. The feature will roll out soon with a larger launch happening in 2025. It's a first step that Roblox takes towards broadening the shopping part of their platform which is currently limited to digital avatar items. Link

?? Forbes Web3 loyalty

Forbes Web3 devision has announced a partnership with "qiibee foundation" to build a blockchain-based loyalty platform. The new Forbes Web3 loyalty program will launch later this year. It will offer users a variety of rewards also outside of Forbes' own ecosystem. It's not clear which exact role blockchain should be playing here. Link