Major League Baseball is getting into the NFT game.
The league announced on Tuesday a new partnership with Candy Digital, featuring Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech as its first exclusive NFT, which will be released over the July 4 weekend on the anniversary of the speech. All proceeds will go to ALS charities.
The partnership with Candy Digital, which was formed by Fanatics chairman Michael Rubin, is a multiyear licensing agreement that will allow MLB to produce non-fungible tokens.
“From trading cards to autographed balls, baseball fans have demonstrated their passion for the sport and it’s players through collectibles for decades,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
An NFT, or non-fungible token, is essentially a unique, one-of-a-kind digital trading card that cannot be replaced with something else. While the buyer would not own the physical moment, he or she would own the digital card that features said moment. (Full explainer of an NFT can be found here)
It has become a sort of digital art collecting form, which has recently exploded, and sports leagues, like the NFL and NBA, have already pounced on it as a chance to cash in.
MLB appears to be following in their footsteps and will likely announce more NFTs to follow.
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