Australian media company Basketball Forever has announced an NFT project titled Hoop Hounds that aims to increase NBA fan engagement and provide substantial real-world utility for the tokens.
Critics of NFTs have always taken aim at the supposedly inefficient nature of tokens, with “right click save” memes doing the rounds. However, more recently, there has been an increase in utility-focused NFT projects, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Top Shot, where holders get exclusive access to real-world events and merchandise.
Basketball Forever, the NBA-focused subsidiary of sports media company Forever Network, has developed high levels of engagement on social media in Australia over the past four years and is trying to improve this approach with NFTs.
Basketball Forever will feature a total of 8,888 different “hounds” – various basketball and NBA personalities represented as different styles of animated dogs – each with unique traits and varying levels of rarity. The company expects NFTs to be available within the next six weeks.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Basketball Forever founder Alex Sumsky said his company is doing “everything” on NFTs – saying the technology is more than just a token tied to a JPG and allows organizations to provide innovative ways to increase user engagement. and provide fans with real utility.
Users who knock Hoop NFTs, for example, receive memorabilia and collectibles from real-world fans, regardless of where in the world they live.
“In Phase 1 of the roadmap, users will receive physical items, merchandise, and keepsakes directly tied to the uniqueness of the NFTs they own.”
If a user hits a dog that is carrying particular items, they gain the ability to claim the corresponding physical items in real life. Certain traits and dogs will be tied to various NBA season triggers that would see certain holders sent to NBA games, including flights and lodging.
Sumsky added that the physical merchandise and NBA experiences offered to users are just the first part of the project.
“The biggest game is phase 2 of our roadmap – dog ownership gives users access to daily pools of merchandise, memorabilia and cash prizes that all take place in the form of an app of fan engagement,” he said.
Sumsky explained that Basketball Forever previously ran a non-blockchain-based version of the app called VOAT, which saw high engagement rates. App users log in daily to answer five NBA questions and race to win prizes.
The shift to NFTs offers many more opportunities, he said.
“NFTs and digital providence give companies and organizations like Forever Network the opportunity to learn more about what our users are looking for when it comes to engaging in the sport they love, but more importantly again, it allows us to streamline the delivery of real life items and experiences.”
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NFTs are now attracting mainstream interest with an annual market report from NonFungible discovery that the total value of all NFT transactions globally exceeded more than $17 billion in 2021, up from $82.5 million in 2020. The report also pointed out that “NFT” was selected as the word of the year of the Collins dictionary for 2021.
