Last month Major League Baseball (MLB) announced its partner for its launch of NFTs and the choice was Candy Digital a band new company. At the time of the announcement a lot was unknown about Candy. The announcement of this partnership coincided with Lou Gehrig Day and the first NFT for sale was an NFT of Lou Gehrig and his famous "Luckiest Man in the World" speech. Today is the last day to bid on that NFT with it currently sitting at over $26,000 for the 1 of 1 NFT. Since this auction is ending the next NFT drop was announced and this time it has a couple of tiers.
Candy will be launching an open ended NFT for the celebration of the Los Angeles Dodgers 2020 World Series win. This NFT will contain come representation of the World Series win and the LA Dodgers logo. It is even reasonably priced at $20.20 which also is fitting since it was the 2020 World Series.
The other NFT being launched is something I was expecting from MLB as it blends the collective nature of their fans with NFTs. The exclusive NFT that will also be 1 of 1 goes to the highest bidder and comes with some amazing perks. The biggest thing to a sports collector will be the PHYSICAL World Series Ring. World Series rings like most Professional sports championship rings are very expensive in their own right. This ring will be no different as it will be decked out with sapphires and diamonds.
The other thing it comes with is the "first pitch experience" as they are calling it. This allows for the winner to throw out the first pitch at an upcoming Dodger baseball game and one would assume come with pretty good seats for the winner. It would not surprise me to see other details come out about what this experience is. Dodger tickets especially really good ones are pretty expensive further boosting the value in the NFT.
This type of partnership is something that I expected with MLB launching NFTs. Baseball fans and collectors tend to be older individuals so to get them to participate in this new collector realm might need an initial boost. Using the World Series winners and the huge fanbase that the Dodger have makes a ton of sense for MLB. With the All Star break coming up next week it will be interesting to see if they announce some NBA TopShot like NFT reels. It makes sense to me for highlights to be something that MLB ends up rolling out with Candy. Especially with the royalty structure that has been released MLB will get a cut of the initial sale and then also second hand sales so monetizing these videos could really help boost their bottom line.
It is kind of funny to see how they are really building Candy Digital on the run though as seen on their website where they are currently hiring for what seems to be every position! If you live in New York and love baseball and crypto this could be an interesting place to work since the partnership has been described as long term unlike Lucid Sight was.
