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- Super Bowl LVI takes place at SoFi Stadium
- 250,000 digital ticket stubs were distributed earlier this season
- Venue capacity is 70,240 spectators
The National Football League (NFL) will give a commemorative non-fungible token (NFT) to every fan who purchases a ticket for Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles next month.
The offer forms part of the American football league’s experimentation with digital collectibles and follows a trial of digital ticket stubs earlier in the season. Fans who bought a ticket for selected matches via an official channel, such as a team box office or a partner like Ticketmaster, StubHub, or SeatGeek, were eligible.
The NFL says as many as 250,000 NFTs were distributed via these trials, while the league has also offered other forms of NFTs in other drops. Most recently, several teams participating in the NFL playoffs were offering commemorative NFTs and ticket stubs for their wild card games last week.
The same eligibility criteria will apply for the Super Bowl and each NFT will be customised with the attendee’s seat number, offering fans a digital equivalent to the physical ticket stub. However, the NFL will also be exploring secondary market activity, hoping to understand how these NFTs are bought, sold, and fluctuate in value.
Given that digital ticket stubs are directly analogous to physical tickets which are in limited supply due to stadium capacity, they are a natural fit for NFTs. And, inevitably, as with any NFT exercise, these stubs could increase in value and become a form of investment.
The league says NFTs are a high priority for the organisation, and it believes it is only scratching the surface when it comes to what might be possible. It plans to drop more collectibles for fans of all 32 teams to trade and collect, while it has also formed a partnership with Dapper Labs to create digital video highlight NFTs similar to the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) successful Top Shot venture.
Future NFTs could also include access to exclusive events, combining digital and physical utility.
