22/07/2021 DraftKings shares plans for launch of NFT collectibles marketplace

DraftKings is charging into the NFT game, announcing a marketplace aimed at curating sports and entertainment-themed digital collectibles for its audience of enthusiasts. The platform is “debuting later this summer,” and showcases another potentially lucrative expansion for the fantasy sports betting company.

DraftKings is entering a market that is both crowded and sparse — with plenty of NFT marketplace options for today’s niche group of collectors, though offerings are still light when considering the billions that have flowed through the space in the first several months of the year. This week, investors gave NFT marketplace OpenSea a $1.5 billion valuation. Dapper Labs, which makes NBA Top Shot, recently raised at a reported $7.5 billion valuation.

Dapper’s existing sway in the space will leave DraftKings pursuing opportunities outside exclusive league partnerships. NBA Top Shot allows players to buy “Moments” from NBA history, clips of actual game and player footage to which it has access via league and players’ association partnerships. In addition to the NBA, Dapper has already partnered with other leagues.

DraftKings’ foothold in the space will come from an exclusive partnership with Autograph, a newly launched NFT startup co-founded by quarterback Tom Brady. The company has inked exclusive NFT deals with some top athletes, including Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Derek Jeter, Naomi Osaka and Tony Hawk, hoping to build out its platform as the hub for sports personality collectibles.

Aside from the partnerships, DraftKings is hoping to get a leg up in the space by further simplifying the user onboarding process, allowing users to buy NFTs without loading a wallet with cryptocurrency, instead purchasing with USD. When the platform launches, users will be able to purchase NFTs from DraftKings and resell or trade them through the platform.

For DraftKings, which has raised some $720 million in funding since launch in 2012, the NFT expansion could offer an opportunity of funneling their existing audience into the new vertical. Few existing tech startups have made noteworthy expansions into the NFT world despite plenty of hype and investor interest. DraftKings co-founder Matt Kalish tells TechCrunch that the startup’s devoted community is its biggest asset to winning in the rising space.

“DraftKings has millions of people in our community who show up to out-platform every day and every week,” Kalish says. “We think our biggest advantage is the strength and size of our community… [We] will bring a lot of eyeballs to the table.”

Arts

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/21/draftkings-shares-plans-for-launch-of-nft-collectibles-marketplace/

Interesting NFTs
Bored Ape Yacht Club #7090
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique Bored Ape NFTs— unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits, the first of which is access to THE BATHROOM, a collaborative graffiti board. Future areas and perks can be unlocked by the community through roadmap activation.
trump 2020
This is a photo i took of my son playing around in one of our cat carriers, redressed to express the concern and damage the continuation of the trump administration could bring to the world in 2020 and beyond. Unlike the majority of my historic work found on opensea, all content was conceived and taken by me, so felt perfect to use as my first piece on Known Origin.
What Happened in the Berry Patch (Sconce)
MISHA KAHN (B. 1989) What Happened in the Berry Patch (Sconce) Printable 3D model (FBX with vertex colors) together with an MP4 (00:00:08 seconds, 2048 x 2048 pixels) Executed in 2021. This work is unique and is sold as a non-fungible token. token ID: 25589172339488513184097753251259367849292773157707017705630314481629928620033 wallet address: 0x3892f55253893325771bcebda2aaacdd5c793c4c smart contract address: 0x495f947276749Ce646f68AC8c248420045cb7b5e
Iconic Crypto Queen
(Virtual) blondes have more fun, right? #iconic ICONIC (Adj.): of, relating to, or having the characteristics of an icon. Widely recognized and well-established.
ℤ
Things are not always as they seem. Living in poverty is like serving a sentence in a prison with invisible bars. The keys are in plain sight, yet impossible to reach. Screen time captivates us with its addictive dopamine triggers, plucking at our attention span until we are no longer aware of the present... What if both worlds collide? Hand-rendered acrylics on bristol board scanned and converted into a digital image.