Mastercard Launch UEFA Champions League NFT Trivia Game

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Introduction 🔌🔧

Welcome back to Sporting Crypto!

It was the Super Bowl yesterday and… there were no crypto ads.

Usually for Sporting Crypto, we can bank on one write-up per year discussing how terrible, or on the rare occasion how good, crypto ads during the Super Bowl were.

Increased scrutiny on how crypto is marketed, more cash-strapped crypto businesses, or a lack of global reach have all been touted as reasons why there weren’t any crypto ads this time around.

And this year, it isn’t American Football that has stolen Web3 x Sports headlines, it’s the real, the original, association football ⚽

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In this newsletter, we look at Mastercard’s launch of an NFT trivia game, in partnership with MoonPay, which tests fans on their knowledge of UEFA Champions League history.

Discussed in this newsletter:

⚽ Mastercard’s UEFA Champions League (UCL) NFT Trivia Game💳 Mastercard’s Pass to Priceless NFT Platform 🤔Are sponsors the route in?

⚽ Mastercard’s UEFA Champions League (UCL) NFT Trivia Game

Mastercard have launched an NFT-powered soccer trivia game that rewards their fans with the possibility of winning match tickets, depending on how they rank in leaderboards.

The competition kicks off with the UCL knockout rounds which begin on the 13th of February. Thirty minutes before the first knockout game, Mastercard customers will be able to collect branded NFT ‘passes’ through Mastercard’s new ‘Pass to Priceless’ platform.

Mastercard have partnered with Moonpay and Polygon to launch the campaign, and it will run until the Champions League Final on June 1st 2024. 

The trivia is based on Champions League history and statistics, and winners of each round will be rewarded with UCL match tickets. Depending on how well fans progress, they’ll climb the competition leaderboard. The player sitting at the top of the leaderboard after the semi-final on 30th April 2024 will win tickets to the final at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Beatrice Cornacchia, EVP of Marketing and Communications in Europe for Mastercard said:

To summarise the campaign:

• Mastercard have sponsored the UCL for 30+ years

• Through their new Pass to Priceless NFT platform, Mastercard customers will be able to engage in Web3 fuelled trivia, with winners of each round winning match day tickets.

• The best performers at the end of the campaign will be given UCL final tickets

• The collectable NFTs are on Polygon, and crypto company Moonpay have supported the creation of the platform and campaign

💳 Mastercard’s Pass to Priceless NFT Platform

Mastercard’s new ‘Pass to Priceless’ NFT platform is simple to use.

You can easily create an account using your email, and then get started by clicking on ‘live programs’.

Users are then able to claim an NFT pass, which they need to enter each trivia round, and are also able to view it in your collection. 

It’s pretty seamless, and everything down to the sound design is crisp.

The experience is as easy as making an account on any type of application you can think of. 🤔 Are sponsors the route in?

“What is the business model here?”

That’s the question I, and many of those within an organisation trying to push Web3 are faced with if they have hurdled the inevitable “Why use blockchain?” question.

Brands are reticent to allocate budgets to Web3 activities for a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones is the perceived lack of direct ROI from a monetary perspective.

When existing sponsorships are in place, however, the money exchanging hands has already provided the brand an ROI. The sponsor is then responsible for maximising their ROI from the sponsorship inventory they have bought.

In this case, Mastercard are a big sponsor of the UEFA Champions League and are looking at a new and innovative way to engage the audience of the brand they are sponsoring. Mastercard have got a large Web3 footprint, so it’s no surprise to see them look in the direction of NFTs.

We’ve seen a plethora of other successful NFT sports propositions that have stemmed from sponsorship. Manchester United and McLaren with their Tezos partnerships for example, have both seen great success with their free-to-claim NFT programs.

Most sports leaders I speak to at the moment are trying to replicate this, from a funding perspective.

The stakeholders they’re managing upwards like the idea of Web3, whether it be some free collectibles or a fully-fledged loyalty program, but they either don’t have the budget or don’t want to attribute it to something that may not give them a return on that investment. So, those who are looking to push a Web3 project go to potential or existing sponsors and look to fund their proposal in that manner.

There are of course risks and downsides to outside investment in the form of sponsorship funding that could shape to be an extremely important fan engagement pillar in the future.

If it’s a blockchain that sponsors the campaign, what happens if they decide not to renew? 

This is something we’ve yet to see properly play out in the market, but we’ve seen hints of it. For example, FIFA have only recently announced a partnership with blockchain Polygon, even though they were previously sponsored, and are still partnered with competitor blockchain Algorand.

Short term, I suspect many Web3 campaigns in sports will be sponsor-driven.

But many are also looking at self-funding their Web3 activities, as they do not want to be bound by sponsorship contracts. Mid-long term, we will see a lot of this, especially as the adoption of digital assets (or their underlying technology) continues to increase.

💡 Sporting Crypto Spotlight - Ep. 14 of the Podcast!

In Ep. 14 of the Podcast I was lucky enough to speak to Richard Ayers, Co-Founder of Rematch to discuss Web3 optics in sports and Fandom vs. Audience

Watch the episode on YouTube!

Or your podcast player of choice… if you’d prefer not to see our faces!

🍎 Find us on Apple Podcasts here [Link]

✅ Find us on Spotify here [Link]

More Sports & Web3 Stories

• NBA Sued Over Deal With Failed Crypto Exchange Voyager (Read more here)

• Karate Combat has risen to become the largest Fan Token in Market Cap (Read more here)

• Digital horse racing game ZED Run has announced some major updates (Read more here)

• UNKJD Studios has rebranded to UNKJD Soccer, plans to create interconnected sports gaming universe (Read more here)

• Can Web3 save eSports? From Sam Barberie (Read more here)

• Deloitte & Astar partners to Innovate Sports with Blockchain (Read more here)

General ‘Stuff’ that Could Impact You

• Robinhood grows self-custody wallet integrations with MetaMask partnership (Read more here)

• Web3 domain provider DNS has partnered with GoDaddy (Read more here)

• Heroes of Mavia, a Web3 mobile game, has reached 1m downloads globally (Read more here)

• Off The Grid, a first-person shooter, is the first Web3 game playable on Xbox (Read more here)

• BitGo have acquired fintech platform Brassica (Read more here)

• Hashgraph Association have launched the DeepTech Venture studio with the Saudi Ministry of Investment worth $250m over the next 5 years (Read more here)

• NFT Project Doodles and Gshock have collaborated to create a exclusive watch collection (Read more here)

• Disney to take $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games (Read more here)

• Japan Airlines and Hakuhodo to launch NFT collection (Read more here)

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