Blocksport: Building the all-in-one NFT platform

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, hold many innovative opportunities that were previously bound to the physical world.

Blockchain technology opened a new market for limited-edition images, videos and digital artwork. It also created a new revenue source for individuals and companies, including traditional sports and esports organisations.

Consequently, numerous esports companies and orgs, such as G2 Esports, EVOS Esports, Flashpoint or Virtus.pro, have joined the latest trend and revealed their freshly minted NFT series, hoping to increase their revenues while also giving back to their fans.

Blocksport aims to build a comprehensive NFT ecosystem for esports and sports enthusiasts. Image Credit: Blocksport

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One of the companies that focus on providing complex, tailored solutions for orgs looking to expand their revenue streams through NFTs is Swiss Blocksport. Prior to launching its new NFT aggregation platform, Blocksport’s Co-Founder and CEO, Vladimir Liulka spoke to Esports Insider about the company’s plan to build an ecosystem for esports and traditional sports enthusiasts that integrates games, NFT collections and fan community management.

In other words, build a service platform for the vertical fields of the sports and esports industries in an encrypted world. 

Liulka explained: “At the core of our NFT platform’s value proposition is the creation of a simple, compliant and interoperable platform for virtual trading of all sport or esport assets in tokenized form.” 

Combining functions 

Built on the Ethereum blockchain and Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Blocksport platform’s core features include minting, issuance, and bidding auctions for NFTs and fan tokens. 

According to Liulka, the platform’s advantage lies in combining functions that other platforms use individually. 

“What we are providing is not just simply a tokenized NFT playing card or a trading market,“ he said. “Our platform consists of three integrated products that will provide a comprehensive experience for our fans and partnered clubs and teams.”

The first of the three products offered by Blocksport revolves solely around NFTs minting and distribution of any type of non-fungible tokens, such as digital collectible cards, digital tickets, fan pictures or virtual merchandise. 

Second is fan token offering — an option to partner with well-known clubs to provide a tokenised voting platform where fans can buy, sell and execute votes and benefit from exclusive VIP perks. 

Third is staking, a combination of gamefi (crypto gaming) and NFTs in esports. This includes competing, purchasing and staking NFTs and tokens in order to win mining rewards or play games.

 

Pictured: Vladimir Liulka, Blocksport’s Co-Founder and CEO

In addition to the NFT-fan token-gamefi combination, Blocksport places a great deal of emphasis on the quality of its services, which includes experienced and well-trained personnel. 

“Blocksport’s team and founders are not newbies who have just started playing on the NFT field,” said Liulka. “With extensive knowledge and experience in the sports area and the development of non-fungible tokens, we are willing to help sports and esports athletes, teams, and innovators who are looking to start their NFT journey.” 

He continued: “We have mentors who are very influential people in the world of traditional sports and esports. Moreover, we only allow stars to create NFTs, which ultimately improves the quality of NFTs.”

Esports insights 

When it comes to esports, the Swiss company is no newcomer. Besides jumping on the NFT wagon, Blocksport is focusing on providing solutions for branded and engagement mobile applications. As such, the company previously collaborated with multiple esports organisations including BIG, FURIA Esports, Team Singularity, PENTA Sports and FATE Esports

“We gained many different insights from tens of partnerships we signed up so far,” said Liulka.

Given that such observations are potentially very useful in future collaborations, he pointed out four most-valuable insights the company has gained: “Firstly, even top-tier teams need to learn how to better engage with their fans. Just placing content across social media channels and talking to the fans over Discord is simply not enough.

“Then there are tier two and three esports orgs, which are often not professional enough. These kids have to learn a lot about how to run a business and how to be less dreamers and more practical entrepreneurs.” 

Liulka continued: “Fans are looking for a way to be closer to their favourite teams and players. This means that teams need to work on the quality of content they are producing and pay more attention to mobile channels as a primary tube for exclusive engagement of their community.

“Last, but not least — the tokenisation of the relationship between teams and communities should be a part of the agenda of professional organisations that are looking for new revenue streams and innovative ways of fan engagement.” 

Blocksport NFT platform uses a utility token named BSPT, which acts as the platform’s own cryptocurrency. Image Credit: Blocksport

When questioned why the company decided to expand into the NFT business, Liulka admitted it was an obvious choice: “Since the NFT market became so popular over the past 12 months, our client demand for NFTs has increased as well. Clients and prospects started requesting an NFT platform where they can find all sports and esports-related NFTs.

“Most importantly, Blocksport aims to grow the sports and esports markets by building an NFT platform,” he added. 

Blocksport’s launch plans  

With the platform’s launch set for this October, Blocksport has planned four special NFT events to promote the platform and potentially attract users. This includes seven celebrity NFT video announcements, an online NFT show, an NFT bidding auction for airdrop rewards and the Blocksport Video Contest. 

Within the first year of its existence, Blocksport platform will be gradually releasing its features, starting with the NFT marketplace and continuing with NFT staking, gamefi and fan tokens. 

“We hope that the platform opens for a soft launch to the public. Then, more NFTs, more celebrities, more fan tokens and more games will be provided for our users,” said Liulka. 

Naturally, the new platform will bring numerous partnership opportunities not only for esports organisations, but also for content creators and other platforms looking to get involved. 

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“We invite esports teams to partner up with us for an easy and profitable issuance of their fan tokens, using our platform as a launch pad,” said Liulka. 

“This applies also to content creators and content platforms that can be integrated to our product by API for automatic NFT minting. Moreover, we are happy to be integrated with different payment gateways to increase flexibility for our end-users.”

As for the future of NFTs, Liulka sees plenty of room for improvement: “At present, many NFT platforms do not have a reasonable NFT pricing mechanism, nor do they have differentiated and more detailed services.”

“That said, I expect that the NFT experience will continue improving and that the NFT market will be more segmented and differentiated, gradually evolving into NFT finance in the future,” concluded Liulka.


Supported by: Blocksport

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