NFL Rivals, a free-to-play game fromMythical Games, has managed to score over a million downloads despite debuting amidst aharsh crypto environmentand in the off-season of the NFL itself.

Debuting on April 26 in the Google Play and Apple Stores, the game was met with early enthusiasm, rising to thetop spot in the App Store, which Mythical Games CEO John Linden captured on Twitter at the time:

Linden told CoinDesk that while hitting milestones like 1 million downloads is exciting, he’s more interested in how well the game has been received. “We're sitting at a 4.8 out of five on [the App Store] with nearly 22,000 reviews, which is great.”

“We're also seeing nearly two hours of gameplay per player per day, which is exciting. It's great seeing players really playing the game,” he added.

Other stats shared with CoinDesk by Mythical Games noted that NFL Rivals has seen nearly 15 million matches played and that on average, players have six gaming sessions per day, showing the stickiness of the experience.

The NFTs in the game are player cards used to build out teams and compete in the game. Each player card has different rarity levels from common to legendary and are assigned different strengths and weaknesses.

The fact that the player cards are NFTs is “behind the scenes” for most players, Linden noted, who are able to play the game without purchasing any NFTs. “Every player gets a wallet in the game, and then most of them probably don't know it's a wallet until they want to start interacting with the marketplace to buy, sell or trade.”

Linden estimates that roughly 10% of the players have interacted with the market to trade player card collectibles such as the cardsreleased ahead of Super Bowl LVII.

“What we are seeing is that players when they come in, even if they're not familiar with Web3 concepts, they do understand the concept of hey, somebody wants to pay me $100 for my cards,” Linden said. “We love the idea that we can onboard them very gently into the space.”

The NFL tapped Mythical Games tolaunch its first Web3 gamein May 2022, but it’s not the only foray into Web3 for the league, which also has aticketing collectible platformon Polygon and a Dapper Labs-built collectible marketplace,NFL All Day.