It’s 2022 and Super Bowl Sunday: you’ve got your lucky underwear on, food’s fresh off the grill, your sister made her signature queso and your teenage nephew won’t stop talking about a pixelated picture of an ape worth a couple thousand dollars.
This year’s big game has quite a bit of cultural weight on it. From the star-studded halftime performance, quarterback Joe Burrow’s hot streak, and a brand-new stadium — NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have also made their way into the mix.
With their presence becoming harder and harder to ignore — and your nephew’s conversation getting louder and louder — what are NFTs, and how are they relevant to one of the largest commercial and sports days of the year?
To understand what an NFT is, first, we have to look into the world they exist in — the crypto space. I’m a nerd, but not that kind of nerd. Not a useful nerd. So, I turned to my friend and super-nerd, Patrick, to speak to the world of crypto and NFTs.
Crypto:
“A cryptocurrency is a virtual currency with the capability to ensure its ownership and transfer. This is done through cryptography, which is a solution to the double-spend problem. Blockchain technology is used for these currencies, which is basically a ledger of transactions that is immutable.”
NFTs:
“NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, work in a similar way as they have a transferable key associated with them that can only be owned by one user at a time.”
This means each NFT is unique and can’t be replaced or deleted — making it immutable.
NFTs & Super Bowl LVI
For this year’s prime-time showdown, the National Football League partnered with NFT platforms to give “commemorative NFTs to every fan who purchased a ticket for Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles,” according to Sportico. Through this promotional initiative, Sportico reports as many as 250,000 NFTs were distributed.
Two cryptocurrency exchange platforms, Crypto.com and FTX, have also announced they will be airing commercials during prime time, marking the first time the world has seen this platform on the Super Bowl ad mainstage. With Crypto.com and FTX commercials set to air, this introduces NFTs to a much larger audience and the ticket bundle closes the how-do-I-get-one gap by giving NFTs to an audience who otherwise might not have sought one out.
This Super Bowl Sunday, you can look forward to guacamole, seeing Burrow crack under pressure and the NFT and crypto market trying to shift the perspective from “speculative short-term” to in it for the “long haul.” From an internet trend to mainstream appeal, the blockchain space is not holding back when it comes to letting the world know that it’s here and plans to stay.
