The National Hockey League is embracing digital collectibles, two years after several other major sports leagues joined the NFT trend.
The initiative, NHL Breakaway, was announced in partnership with Sweet, a platform for brands to create NFT collectibles under the Ethereum ERC-721 standard on Polygon and the Ethereum mainnet, as well as the Tezos standard for NFTs. The terms of the agreement between the NHL and Sweet were not disclosed.
Sports league collectibles became all the rage in 2021, as the National Basketball Association entered the arena with NBA Top Shot and the National Football League announced a partnership with Dapper Labs. Major League Baseball has unveiled a partnership for NFT collectibles with trading card manufacturer Topps.
The official launch of NHL Breakaway was scheduled for Wednesday, although Sweet’s website promoted the new program earlier this week. A beta version went live in April.
According to a press release, a “first of its kind” feature of NHL Breakaway is “The Trade Lounge” – a “hub of interaction with the collector community where fans can trade packs and highlights of their favorite plays or NHL players with others in the community. “