The National Football League (NFL) is reportedly banning teams from selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and entering sponsorship deals with crypto trading firms for now.
According to The Athletic, the league is imposing the temporary policy as it comes up with a strategy to enter the market for sports digital cards and arts.
The league is also barring NFL teams from selling sponsorship agreements with crypto exchanges like FTX. However, The Athletic reports that NFL teams can work with asset management firms selling funds that track the performance of crypto assets.
An unnamed team official reveals the NFL’s new guidelines involving the digital asset industry.
“Clubs are prohibited from selling, or otherwise allowing within club controlled media, advertisements for specific cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, other cryptocurrency sales or any other media category as it relates to blockchain, digital asset or as blockchain company, except as outlined in this policy.”
Although the NFL is slow to jump into the booming NFT space, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from sales of digital collectibles. NFT resource CryptoSlam shows that the NBA Top Shot, which sells short clips of NBA highlights as digital collectibles, has generated over $704 million in all-time sales.
Earlier this year, the NBA’s Miami Heat inked a $135 million agreement granting crypto exchange FTX the naming rights to its home arena in Florida. The Chicago Bulls also launched their own NFT collection in partnership with online shopping platform Shopify.
Don't Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inboxFeatured Image: Shutterstock/LEOVIN/Sashkin