There are 5000 limited edition NFTs up for grabs at the French Open, which is currently underway.
Each Roland Garros NFT is a unique virtual number seat on the Philippe Chartier court and
it comes with some rather exclusive pegs. Yohann Calpu, VP Chief Marketing Officer at CryptoSlam,
a cross-chain NFT data tracker and aggregator joins in now to talk about this convergence of
sport and the world of collectibles on NFT Insider. Great to see you again, Yohann.
Great to see you, too, Megah.
We're beginning to see some rather interesting experiences for sports
fans. Those who mint the French Open NFT could win match tickets for 2023
or one of the 55 physical balls that are being played on the center court. Have you taken a look?
I have. And this is kind of like a sports fans, like fantasy. They're getting involved
or getting engaged or getting the the ball of the game. I could see just so much engagement
and so much happiness being brought to the fans because of this type of
setup with NFTs. And it takes it to another level. It gives them something to collect
in digital and physical form as well too. So I love it. I love the model. I hope it
takes off and I hope it gets some new people into NFTs that didn't think about them before.
Now eBay has launched its first NFT drop, which is hockey themed. Then it comes in
different price tiers. But what I find rather interesting is that despite being
one of the oldest e-commerce retailers in the world, they don't have the tech know
how to sell it themselves and are using another web3 marketplace. Your thoughts?
Well, the technology to connect to a public blockchain, even a private blockchain,
is is getting to know smart contracts very natively. And there are different
blockchains out there. I mean, we have 15 plus on our website and each sometimes they all have their
different nuance. And I don't I'm not surprised that eBay is having a trouble that with that,
because the code on the back end is it's intensive to crawl, intensive to pull data off the chain.
And being a sports fan is also all about being a part of the community,
part of a group and a free to play platform called Stakes is giving
you a chance to predict what might happen in your next favorite game.
And if you are the winner, you can mint that pick as an NFT. Do you see any value in this?
Yeah, it sounds like a different model for sports gambling, which has always been successful and
always tried, and I feel like that is a winner if it's done well and if it has the right regulatory
approval and the compliance on the local jurisdictions. But yes, definitely things
that keep people involved and keep people engaged. Sports fans love to bet on the game. It just makes
the game like ten times as interesting when you have some money on there, when you're getting a
prize, too, especially so great, great model. And I hope to see more of these type of things. And
yes, definitely it brings value to the fan. What we're also seeing is that we're seeing
esports pick up. So I am a big sports fan. I love baseball, baseball, basketball, football,
all of those sports. And now we're seeing like EA Sports come into play where we just have different
GameFi , just like what we know is like play to earn is kind of evolving now to a different model
engaged to earn or just different models of accumulating some sort of value back out of
the sport. And we're seeing things like that in Wolf Game, CryptoUnicorns, just different
projects like that that have different models where the player can play and sit back in our
computer and participate in a type of sport and increase engagement that way too as well.
Well, it's all about building that community and having that sense of belonging, isn't it,
Yohan? Thanks as always for joining in.
Thanks for having me, Megha. Have a nice week.