NHL Partners With Sweet to Offer Digital Collectibles, NFTs

The National Hockey League has signed a multiyear partnership agreement with non-fungible token (NFT) platform Sweet to start a digital collectibles marketplace.

• NHL will release NFTs featuring never-before-issued video moments during the league’s 2022-2023 season. Sweet will become NHL’s official digital collectible marketplace, allowing fans to trade and collect NFTs.
• The digital collectibles will include the latest video moments as well as archival moments. The collectibles will feature past and current NHL players including Wayne Gretzky, Tie Domi, Sidney Crosby, and Mario Lemieux, among others.
• The partnership is the first to bring together NHL, National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) and NHL Alumni Association (NHLAA) to offer videos and other collectibles.
• NHL’s announcement comes on the heels of other major league sports associations – including the NBA, MLB and NFL – embracing NFTs.
• The marketplace will have gamified elements and will also allow fans to interact with each other.
• “Building NFTs and digital collectibles that are really cool, have great design and are scarce and have collectible value is absolutely important, but we’re also thinking about what’s the utility beyond that and about how [digital collectibles] plug into the broader fan experience and what that means for the NHL,” NHL's senior vice president of global partnerships, David Lehanski, told CoinDesk.

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