The National Hockey League is embracing digital collectibles, two years after several other major sports leagues aped into the NFT-fueled trend.
The initiative, NHL Breakaway, was announced in conjunction with Sweet, a platform for brands to create NFT collectibles under the Ethereum ERC-721 standard on Polygon and the Ethereum mainnet. Terms of the arrangement between the NHL and Sweet weren’t disclosed.
Sports-league collectibles became all the rage in 2021, when the National Basketball Association jumped into the arena with NBA Top Shot and the National Football League announced a partnership with Dapper Labs. Major League Baseball unveiled a tie-in for NFT collectibles with trading card manufacturer Topps.
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The official launch of NHL Breakaway was pegged for Wednesday, though earlier in the week Sweet’s website was already promoting the new program. 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 collector community interaction where fans can trade packs and highlights of their favorite plays or NHL Players with others in the community.”
Other NFT platforms have minted hockey-related collectibles.
The blockchain Pastel Network’s SmartMint platform for NFT minting announced a new collection earlier this week tied to Bobby Orr, a defenseman who played 12 seasons in the 1960s and 1970s and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979.
