Highlights
- NFTs are digital certificates of ownership for one-of-a-kind, largely virtual pieces of art.
- The sports sector is the most recent to jump on the NFT bandwagon and Aussie sportsmen too, have joined the show.
- Australian cricketer Aaron Finch is the latest sports star to have tapped into the NFT craze.
- Finch has signed an exclusive partnership with Rario, the world's first officially licensed cricket digital collectibles platform.
Over the last few years, non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) have swept the crypto world. NFTs are digital certificates of ownership for one-of-a-kind, largely virtual pieces of art.
At the moment, everyone is craving for a piece of the much-coveted NFT pie.
The sports sector is the most recent one to jump on the NFT bandwagon and Australian sports stars are also joining the show. Aaron Finch, Australian white-ball captain, is the most recent sportsperson to sign an exclusive partnership with Rario, the world's first officially licensed cricket digital collectibles platform.
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The other players who already joined Rario are Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, Jason Holder, Rishabh Pant, Rashid Khan, Quinton De Kock, Smriti Mandhana, Ruturaj Gaikwad.
Rario is a blockchain-based digital platform that allows cricket and crypto enthusiasts to acquire and trade officially licensed cricket NFTs. Rario has Animoca and Polygon Studios as its partners, while Presight Capital and Kingsway Capital are among the investors that have funded this digital platform. It may be noted that Rario NFTs are minted on Polygon.
Moreover, the platform allows sports enthusiasts to engage as a community and invest in tangible sporting moments.
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Which other Australian sports stars have boarded the NFT train?
Latrell Mitchell
National Rugby League (NRL) player Latrell Mitchell is one of the first Australian sportspersons to have signed with an NFT platform. In December last year, the NRL player signed with Stadio, a home-grown NFT Platform. Mitchell joined a slew of other Australian sportspersons on Stadio, including football stars Alex Wilkinson and Milos Ninkovic, as well as basketball players Sunday Dech and Dejan Vasiljevic.
Stadio is the first blockchain project to integrate dynamic utility into NFTs. The platform provides fans with access to a collection of NFTs and tokens of their favourite sportspersons.
The Stadio platform allows athletes to explore potential in the crypto realm by monetising their likeness, image and name. Some are capitalising on the platform to develop long-term and deeper bonds with their fans.
Steve Smith
Aussie cricketer Steve Smith announced his foray into the NFT space earlier this year. Smith decided to work with Glorious Digital, a New Zealand-based NFT studio and marketplace.
Glorious aims at creating unique, digital masterpieces. The platform also helps to develop a solid bond between content creators and their fans.
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