Fanatics backed Candy Digital, a non-fungible token (NFT) platform for sports fans, announced it will launch its Racing Series of NFTs next week in partnership with the Race Team Alliance (RTA). The Alliance consists of twelve NASCAR teams, all of which will be participating in an upcoming race in Daytona. The NFT collection has 23 race cars belonging to ten teams. Referred to as “digi-casts”, each car’s NFT is a wireframe with an animation deconstructing the vehicle into its components.
A bundle of the 23 NFTs can be purchased for $500 for a few hours, with the price doubling after that. Alternatively, fans can buy a single car NFT at a fixed price of $50.
The project will reward engagement by giving an exclusive NFT to holders of the top three finishing cars at the Daytona race. Bundle owners are certain to win the commemorative collectible, but for fans who can’t spend $500 but would still like to own an NFT, this feature adds a safe gaming-like component that can make watching the race more exciting.
“Collectibles are a part of the fabric of motorsports,” said Jonathan Marshall, executive director of the RTA. “This is our first of many upcoming product launches and commemorates the stars of our sport, the launch of the Next Gen car and the start of the 2022 season.”
Candy does not have a licensing deal with NASCAR, just with the Racing Team Alliance. Hence, this limits the degree to which the company can use ‘NASCAR’ in its promotion.
Candy launched a little over six months ago and so far has dropped baseball NFTs through a partnership with Major League Baseball .
The NFT startup is majority-owned by ecommerce sports giant Fanatics.
The parent recently set up a collectibles division and acquired rights for conventional collectible cards from the three major sports player associations. Topps, which still owns the MLB collectibles rights through to 2026, was acquired by Fanatics for $500 million in January.
Meanwhile, in October, Candy raised a $100 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Softbank. Despite the close association with Fanatics, it’s unclear how much promotion Candy will receive through the ecommerce giant’s website. We might need to wait until its collectibles division is more visible.
In contrast, another sports NFT site, Tom Brady’s Autograph partnered with DraftKings to build traffic. Autograph recently raised $170 million in a Series B round of funding.
