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Many readers will not have heard of ONE Championship, but they are one of the world's largest mixed martial arts sports. Founded in 2011, the league produces content in over 150 countries and boasts 400 million viewers globally. UFC, the world leader in MMA have 700 million fans globally, for comparison. ONE Championship skews digital in all of its content and distribution, often streaming full fights for free on leading social platforms. A Neilsen report showed that in 2021, aggregated views on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok dwarfed other major sports leagues:

Despite its massive global presence, ONE Championship remains relatively under-the-radar in North America and Europe. However, this is something that may be changing - and this may speak to why the time is now for them to innovate using blockchain. According to GWI, ONE’s US audience grew 46% between December 2022 and May 2023, with further surveys showing that their content skews towards 18-29-year-olds.

ONE Championship have partnered with Layer 1 blockchain Sui, launched in 2022 by Mysten Labs which was founded by former Meta employees, who previously worked on Facebook’s Libra project. This partnership marks their biggest in sport after Red Bull Racing and spans a plethora of different routes for integration.

Most notable to this partnership is ONE Fight Arena, an upcoming mobile game which is a joint project between ONE Championship and Animoca Brands. The game will utilise Sui’s blockchain infrastructure and aims to introduce blockchain functionalities that enhance gameplay.

In addition to ONE Fight Arena, the partnership extends to the creation of a new comic and manga series, which will feature some of ONE Championship’s star athletes. These series will be accessible through zkLogin, a platform designed to provide users with a secure and smooth login experience. This will also incorporate Walrus Protocol, a decentralised storage initiative built by SUI.

Sui and ONE Championship also plan to launch a pick’em game, which will be available for free download. This interactive game will include various challenges and will reward players for their performance, creating an incentive for continued participation. The pick’em game will introduce phygital rewards—collectibles that combine both physical and digital elements. These hybrid collectibles are designed to provide fans with a new type of reward system, merging the tangible appeal of physical items with the versatility of digital assets.

To summarise, the partnership spans various assets within the ONE Championship:

Blockchain integrations in sports are never guaranteed to be a success. Just this week, we've seen a previously ground breaking partnership between NEAR and SailGP come to an end. This could be due to several reasons including the fact that NEAR has shifted its focus away from sports and entertainment to AI, making it unlikely they would continue the commercial terms previously agreed upon.

Sui is a new blockchain on the block (no pun intended) and needs to acquire users from various sources, with sports and entertainment being a key focus. The partnership with ONE Championship is particularly interesting to me for two key reasons:

Gaming - the next Web3 Trend? 🕹

This partnership between Sui and ONE Championship focuses on several areas, but perhaps most notably is the focus on gaming, which is poised for explosive growth over the next few years from a Web3 perspective.

Gaming has long been touted as the major onboarding vehicle for Web3, though it has yet to fully deliver on this promise. That said, we have seen promising signs of success recently across various platforms. For example, NFL Rivals has become one of the most popular mobile games globally, not just in Web3 but overall. Additionally, the launch of the triple-A game Off the Grid saw impressive numbers in terms of account creation and streaming off the bat. There has also been growth and excitement in Telegram-native gaming, much of it Web3-enabled.

Given this context, it makes sense that this partnership has such a heavy lean on gaming. They’re building in an area of Web3 seemingly primed for an explosion, with a digitally native young audience, in a geography where crypto and gaming is hot. That equitation checks out.

I'm particularly curious to see how their Web3 mobile game plays out. NFL Rivals has been incredibly successful. If ONE Championship can replicate that success even slightly, both parties will be very happy here.

One potential concern, however, is the number of integrations outlined in these announcements. It will be interesting to see if all these initiatives can be delivered and to what extent. Many blockchain integrations in sports overpromise and underdeliver, often due to the blockchain partner not fully understanding the sports landscape or underestimating the complexity of rights-holder relationships. Additionally, the technological challenges of implementing these initiatives are often underestimated, particularly when dealing with existing, archaic technology stacks.

That said, considering how digitally savvy ONE Championship already are, one would hope (again no pun intended) they are more prepared to implement and deliver on these promises successfully.

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