As the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs prepare to kick off the NFL season on Thursday, online discussion platform Reddit dropped a significant amount of NFT-backed avatars to commemorate the league’s 32 teams.
The wave of digital assets represents one of the largest collections of so-called Collectible Avatars Reddit has released to date, the company said. Decrypt. They cost $25 per “Snoo” NFT — reflecting the company’s iconic alien mascot — and are limited to 500 per NFL team.
Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles or the aforementioned Super Bowl champion Chiefs may be familiar with the concept of NFL themed avatars. That’s because Reddit’s latest collection follows a free set fell short of last February’s championship game.
🎉 TODAY IS THE DAY 🎉 Introducing NFL #RedditCollectibles for all 32 @NFL teams (limited to 500 units per team). Design yours now! 🏈 #NFLxReddit #2023NFLKickoff https://t.co/e43sIHl9oW pic.twitter.com/WOjRagyJmv
— Reddit (@Reddit) September 6, 2023
The online discussion board has been known to host colorful chats on game day, including within communities such as r/NFL or r/NFCEastMemeWar. The collectibles can serve as a new way for fans to represent their teams in the respective commentary sections as digital lines are drawn.
Of the NFL teams and collectibles sold, the New England Patriots seem to be the most popular at the time of writing with 41 of 500 NFT avatars, followed by the Chiefs and Eagles, according to Reddit’s store page. Only five each have been purchased representing the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts.
Reddit entered the realm of NFTs last summer, using Polygon — an Ethereum scaling network designed around cheaper and faster transactions for large-scale projects and mints — as its network of choice.
Reddit has built on that initial foray with several subsequent collectionsand to date, 22 million collectible avatars have been minted among 18 million unique holders, according to one dashboard on the crypto analytics platform Dune.
The link between sports fans and digital assets has been documented in studies, including a Seton Hall University survey last year that found that sports fans twice as likely to own Bitcoin, Ethereum or NFTs.
Reddit’s digital collectibles are kept in a user’s so-called Vault, a digital wallet associated with the company’s mobile app. rolled out last summer too. Other crypto features of the platform such as community specific Coinsare also held there.