In its partnership with Dapper Labs, UFC has entered an agreement wherein its will share revenue with the UFC players on a 50-50 basis.
On Thursday, January 20, one of America’s largest sports entertainment platforms UFC announced its native NFT collection UFC Strike. As a result, UFC has launched its own NFT marketplace in partnership with Dapper Labs.
These NFTs will be available to fans which will represent the digital version of trading cards. These NFTs will be $50 per pack and include three tokens. Each of these NFTs will feature short highlights from some of UFC’s most memorable fights. Interestingly, UFC has also decided to split profits with the athletes on a 50-50 basis. Speaking of this development, Lawrence Epstein, the UFC’s chief operating officer said:
This is something that our young fan base clearly enjoys and identifies with, so I think there’s a lot of overlap with the younger UFC fan and those who are interested in collecting these NFT products. The thing that’s exciting about this, too, is that it signals sort of an investment in the UFC in the sense that, somebody buys an NFT, they’re probably going to hold onto it for awhile or trade it and buy other ones.
He further added:
“You’re creating a longer term relationship with that consumer as opposed to a single transaction of buying a pay-per-view or even going to an event. This is a longer-term relationship we think that fans are entering into with us that is really exciting, really valuable.”
NFTs – a Modern Version of Collecting Sports Trading Cards
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has had very good success with NFTs and now has got its own native NFT marketplace NBA Top Shot. Epstein believes that NFTs are nothing but modern versions of collecting sports trading cards.
He said that UFC NFTs will feature short videos of some iconic moments from memorable UFC fights. He refers to NFTs as “digital video trading cards”. This could also be a famous knockout from Francis Ngannou, say when he knocked out Alistair Overeem.
He says that the only difference between NFTs and sports trading cards is that instead of being static images, NFTs represent video images.
“People like to have assets that they can hold and touch and carry around with them, but in our modern world, they also enjoy having these digital assets on their phones and having their entire inventory with them in their pockets,” he said.
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