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Discussed in this edition of Sporting Crypto:

Overview of ICC Web3 Fan Passport x Roblox ⛓️

The International Cricket Council (ICC) have launched various Roblox experiences where users can play cricket-themed mini-games within some of Roblox’s most popular activations.

They have launched this with support from The Gang, a full-service gaming studio, who have leveraged its new CRM tool, BOOST, to connect users off-platform. The tool encourages players to sign up for the ICC’s Web3 loyalty program, their ICC Fan Passport, in exchange for rewards and free UGC items, allowing fans to link their Roblox accounts.

The Gang built the backend that links Roblox to the Web3 loyalty program, with Insomnia Labs the ones responsible for the Web3 Fan Passport which tracks and rewards fan engagement. The Fan Passport is built on the NEAR blockchain.

Players can link their Roblox accounts to their Fan Passport which can tell via an API that they've completed certain tasks in-game and then reward them with in-game virtual items.

Finn Bradshaw, ICC’s Head of Digital, said:

ICC Fan passport itself is a hub for fans, that is used to aggregate digital experiences. There is an in-platform XP system using ‘runs’ that users collect to rank up tiers within the Fan Passport platform. Creating an avatar, creating a wallet and connecting your Roblox account are all examples of challenges users can accomplish to reach higher tiers.

The signup process is simple, allowing users to spin up an account using social sign-on or email. They are then prompted to create an avatar, which is used to represent the user throughout their digital experience. Users are then encouraged to create a wallet, which earns them 500 runs.

The wallet creation stage of the experience prompts the user to create another account (the wallet) using a password, which could be seen as confusing to many.

The ICC Fan Passport, with a wallet created on the NEAR blockchain connected to it, is now ready for fans to use as the central point of their digital experiences.

Roblox has become the place for brands globally to market to a younger audience. The platform has 70 million daily active users and over 200 million monthly active users. 58% of these users are 16 years of age or younger, with another 23% of their audience 17-24 years of age.

With numbers like that, it’s easy to see why big portions of marketing budgets are being funnelled toward Roblox.

This example by ICC attempts to take a slice of the huge volume (over 100 million visits) of users coming through their branded mini-games and track their activities off platform, connecting them to the Fan Passport Wallet experience.

Max Proctor, Managing Director at The Gang, said:

It’s been claimed that this is the first Roblox activation tied to a Web3 experience, which is quite the headline.

We have seen something similar in the past, but on Fortnite, by Nike with their Fortnite experience Airphoria. They used their Web3 platform .SWOOSH to connect to Fortnite, giving users who did so extra perks. By connecting accounts, users were given a Linking Achievement NFT which provided access to future Air Max Virtual collections.

This is another example of brands trying to abstract the connection between off-platform digital ownable content and a platform that sells their on-platform digital content. This angle shouldn’t surprise us, from Roblox’s perspective, as their CEO David Baszucki was quoted in late 2023 saying they want to play a key role in making the ‘dream’ of cross-platform digital content come to fruition.

This, however, does fragment the user experience slightly — making them connect different platforms and sometimes claim experiences separately on different accounts. This was more seamlessly done in the Nike x Fortnite example as it was a one-off activation. However, the ICC experience is trying to funnel fans to something in the ICC Fan Passport which aims to become your single port to digital experiences, which makes it a much more steep technical hurdle to clear.

Connecting old plumbing to new is always difficult.

When we talk about abstracting the Web3 experience to make life easier for fans and consumers, I often imagine native integration and seamless account creation. Experiences equivalent to what we are used to with best-in-class Web2 digital applications. This slightly janky, connective middle ground, however, is the bit in between that. It’s the part where you have old plumbing connecting to a new tap and boiler, and there are a few issues with your water pressure.

When new experiences are built on an old tech stack, it’s never quite as smooth as something built from the ground up with new technology. That’s why the ICC Fan Passport concept, connecting to an existing experience in Roblox, was never going to be as flawless as something greenfield.

Meet your new boss, the same as the old boss

Roblox has created an amazing platform with a highly engaged user base, of an average age group that brands want to target.

For brands, they are advertising in a gamified way to consumers they want to attract, in a place where they are already spending time. It’s a gamified advertising play. Like Instagram, however, brands are ‘renting’ space and mindshare on these platforms. So it’s smart for the ICC to try and funnel part of that traction into their onchain network. Until now, it has been difficult to prove ROI for Roblox experiences for sports brands, and monetisation has been tricky. So creating those direct relationships that could be leveraged down the line, makes sense from the ICC’s perspective.

As we have covered at great length in numerous editions of the newsletter, there is a huge data issue in sports — in terms of understanding who fans are. Sometimes, there is no appetite to do so. There is a push to sell sponsorship and tickets, but getting a more granular understanding of your fans to leverage for commercial opportunities down the line is far down the list of priorities for most sports brands.

This tide is turning, slowly, however — and even incumbent brands with old tech stacks in sports are waking up to the fact that it will benefit them greatly to know who their fans are.

What ICC have done here with Fan Passport might not make User Experience case studies at design schools, but the principles behind the proposition make sense.

Creating funnels that can harness engagement on other platforms, connecting them to a central point that also allows you to connect to other applications is the vision. And they won’t be the last rights holder thinking this way.

Our first premium research report: McLaren Racing 23/23: A New Era of Fan Engagement.

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