Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski is selling over 300 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) spotlighting moments during this year’s Super Bowl and the other three Super Bowls of his career, according to a CNBC report on Tuesday (March 9).
The NFTs — hand-illustrated by Brazilian art studio Black Madre — will feature Gronkowski’s football career highlights on five digital trading cards. They will be sold on the blockchain-based Open Sea marketplace, which specializes in user-owned digital merchandise, including gaming items, domain names, digital art and more.
The original cards, which will be signed by Gronkowski, will depict celebrated plays from the five Super Bowls he participated in and the four he won — XLIX, LI, LIII and LV. In his career so far, he has played nine seasons for the New England Patriots and four for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Gronkowski first heard of the NFT digital collectible space during last year’s NFL season, he told CNBC. NFTs were endorsed by Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban, another reason Gronkowski said he became interested. “I see what’s going on, and it’s just exploding,” the athlete told CNBC. “I wanted my fans who are living in the digital world to be able to get a piece of this action.”
NFTs gained traction in sports when the National Basketball Association (NBA) teamed with Dapper Labs, bringing in over $230 million in sales, the article indicated. Being tied to the blockchain gives each NFT a unique certificate of authenticity, which is one-of-a-kind and resistant to hacking.
By way of example, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is selling his first tweet as an NFT, with bids coming in higher than $2.5 million. The tweet, which said “just setting up my Twitter,” was sent in March 2006.
NFTs are the latest cryptocurrency trend. The digital asset is not interchangeable and is different from bitcoin, according to CNBC. The asset could have a “novelty value” that could lead to aggressive trading.
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