Major League Baseball recently announced a long-term agreement with digital collectible company Candy Digital. Candy Digital is a new sports non-fungible token (NFT) company backed by Galaxy Digital.
NFTs are digital assets representing real-world objects, like a piece of artwork, or music, or a baseball card; tied to a blockchain. MLB and Candy's NFTs will run on the Ethereum blockchain.
Candy Digital is a joint venture being launched by Fanatics chairman Michael Rubin, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. MLB already produces trading card NFTs in collaboration with Topps, but now with Candy, there will be a wider range of baseball digital collectibles.
Source: MLB
As part of the agreement Candy will build an MLB ecosystem to buy, trade and share officially licensed baseball content NFTs. The first NFT launched on July 4 will be of Lou Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech, delivered July 4, 1939, at Yankee Stadium in New York.
"As a lifetime collector myself, I couldn’t be more excited for what this partnership means for both creators and consumers, ...especially the uber-passionate MLB community who craves collectibles and celebrating the iconic moments that make this game so special,"
said Vaynerchuk.
Interestingly, sports NFTs have gained massive popularity in recent months, with NBA Top Shot passing $700 million in total sales in less than a year.