decrypt.co
As the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs gear up to kick off the NFL season on Thursday, the online discussion platform Reddit dropped a sizable batch of NFT-backed avatars to commemorate the league’s 32 teams.
The wave of digital assets represents one of the largest collections of so-called Collectible Avatars released by Reddit to date, the company told Decrypt. They are priced at $25 per “Snoo” NFT—reflecting the company’s iconic alien mascot—and capped at 500 per NFL team.
Fans of the Philadelphia Eagles or the aforementioned Super Bowl champion Chiefs may be familiar with the concept of NFL-themed avatars. That’s because the latest collection released by Reddit follows a free set dropped alongside the league's championship game last February.
🎉 TODAY IS THE DAY 🎉 Introducing NFL #RedditCollectibles for all 32 @NFL teams (limited to 500 units per team). Draft yours now! 🏈 #NFLxReddit #2023NFLKickoff https://t.co/e43sIHl9oW pic.twitter.com/WOjRagyJmv
— Reddit (@Reddit) September 6, 2023
The online discussion board is known to host colorful chats on game day, including within communities like r/NFL or r/NFCEastMemeWar. The collectibles could serve as a new way for fans to represent their teams in respective comment sections as digital lines are drawn.
Among NFL teams and collectibles sold, the New England Patriots appear to be the most popular as of this writing with 41 of 500 NFT avatars solid, followed by the Chiefs and Eagles, according to Reddit's shop page. Only five each have been purchased representing the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts.
Reddit stepped into the realm of NFTs last summer, tapping Polygon—an Ethereum scaling network designed around cheaper and faster transactions for large-scale projects and mints—as its network of choice.
Reddit has built upon that initial foray with several subsequent collections, and 22 million collectible avatars have been minted so far among 18 million unique holders, according to a dashboard on the crypto analytics platform Dune.
The link between sports fans and digital assets has been documented in surveys, including one last year from Seton Hall University that found sports fans are twice as likely to own Bitcoin, Ethereum, or NFTs.
Reddit’s digital collectibles are held within a user’s so-called Vault, a digital wallet native to the firm’s mobile app that was rolled out last summer as well. Other crypto features from the platform, like community-specific tokens, are also held there.