How Is A 600 Thousand Dollars Blockchain-Powered Phygital Sports Start-Up Ushering A New Era Of Gamers In India?
The Beginning Of A New Era
What difference do three die-hard sports enthusiasts who are also early investors in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency bring? This story started when Siddharth Jaiswal, Vinayak Yannam, and Sankara Subramanian SK combined two of their passions: Sports and Blockchain, in a one-of-its-kind business venture.
Sportzchain, a hybrid name derived from their passions, was founded in April 2021. Sportzchain is the place for sports lovers, with fans of FCs like Arsenal and Manchester United to Mumbai Indians. They bond over shared interests in different sports and have clear favourites.
What Helped Sportzchain Pave The Way?
Sportzchain is the world’s first engage-to-earn (E2E) platform. They enable sports fans to earn while engaging with their favourite teams’ sports through five key products they offer.
- Fan tokens: This is a Blockchain-powered tokenised membership where fans can directly influence sports teams’ decisions.
- NFTs: They specialise in converting match-day memorabilia of players into phygital NFTs, where they combine the physical and digital NFT sides.
- Play to Earn: This product is for casual games such as stick cricket for the fans to play while also earning parallelly.
- Watch to Earn: This product enables fans to earn while watching a live sports match.
- Fan Commerce: Through this product, fans can Redeem $SPN Sportzchain’s native tokens and use them to buy sports merchandise, match day tickets, and OTT subscriptions such as Hotstar, Sony LIVE, and Amazon Prime.
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Becoming The New “Fan Favourite”
It took Sportzchain a year to start developing their Alpha application. They aim to build a platform where fans have the liberty to purchase tokens of their favourite teams. Moreover, they have partnered with five sporting teams from the Pro-Kabaddi and Cricket world. Sportzchain launched India’s first Phygital NFT for Tamil Thalaivas through their partner Koinearth.
Sportzchain is the flag bearer for this new online development. Their Alpha application has gone live since the end of July, and they have run three successful polls for Dabang Delhi, Tamil Thalaivas, and Iceland Cricket teams.
During these pools, fans vote for the team’s sporting decisions. This included deciding on the training kid design for Dabang Delhi and Iceland Cricket Team’s next international match.
India has never seen fans making binding sporting decisions for different teams. It is exciting for the fans and the sporting community as a whole because these critical decisions that fans decide on must be abided by the teams irrespective of their personal feelings. Has such inclusion and such activity existed in the Indian sporting world online?
Sportzchain says that the Fan tokens’ market share is USD 500 million and is looking to tap into at least 10% of the market in the coming days.
How Is Blockchain Transforming The Gaming Industry?
Their target audiences are sports fans and crypto investors, predominantly male from 18-40 years of age. At present, their customer base is India-specific. However, they aim to target the Asian markets of Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia very soon. This will take their product international and further grow it.
Before Sportzchain, a typical gamer would play games simply for entertainment. A change came slowly when professional esports came into the picture. Casual gamers can play and earn these days, which is made possible by Blockchain technologies.
Several blockchain-based games allow players to earn NFTs and native tokens. In the future, traditional gaming companies will follow suit.
Sportzchain And Phygital Sports Nft (Non-Fungible Token)
A match-day jersey signed by Surjeet Singh, the former captain of Tamil Thalaivas, was Sportzchain’s first phygital NFT. Accompanying the jersey was a plaque commemorating his 300th tackle point in Pro Kabaddi League. The items were sold to Praveen Ramasamy, a proud owner of Tamil Thalaivas NFT collectables, within 24 hours of listing.
The phygital NFTs were hand-delivered to Praveen Ramasamy in Chennai. He was also awarded a digital twin of the phygital memorabilia along with privileges like match day tickets and an Amazon voucher.
Earlier this year, Sportzchain launched exclusive NFTs of Tamil Thalaivas on Sportzchain’s page hosted on NgageN. Fans and collectors that bought these NFTs were provided with several perks, including match day tickets, lucky draws, and many other exciting rewards.
Competitors, Revenue model, and Funding details:
The company is currently pre-revenue but shares that they consider ‘Socios’ as their direct competition and ‘Fanisko’ as their indirect competition.
They have successfully secured seed funding of USD 600 thousand in May 2022. This funding round was led by SUNiCON Ventures, a highly-acclaimed firm in the funding ecosystem.
What Does The Future Of Gaming And Esports Hold?
Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFTs are all buzzwords of the modern world. Blockchain games are making thunderous noises across the globe and now, in India as well. Blockchain gaming will eat into the timeshare of the traditional gaming industry in India rapidly as the modern generation is all about digital integration.
It is understood that conventional games will always have a separate space in our hearts. However, the future belongs to blockchain gaming without a doubt.
The brand’s strategy is very straightforward; they intend to become a brand representing the digital world for fans. They want to present a single platform where fans can do everything they ever envisioned —starting from engaging with teams, earning while watching live sports, playing games, and building like-minded communities.
Additionally, another selling point is that Sportzchain wants to equip every sports enthusiast to be able to invest in fan tokens and NFTs.
