DraftKings expands its NFT marketplace into Canada
Launch includes Wayne Gretzky ‘drop’ despite hiccups last week where buyers jumped virtual queues to snap up digital collectables
DraftKings has announced that its recently launched marketplace for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, is now available to customers in Canada.
The rollout coincides with the Wayne Gretzky ‘drop’, which involves a full pre-season access collection of the NHL legend provided by NFT platform Autograph in collaboration with sports and entertainment company Upper Deck.
The so-called Premier editions landed on August 17 while the Signature versions will follow on August 20.
DraftKings Marketplace went live in the US last week, headlined by inaugural drops involving Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady.
The Boston-based sports betting, igaming, and DFS operator has a large existing fantasy sports customer base in Canada since its launch in 2012, with so far over 67 million total contest entries, including 11 million involving NHL, the firm said.
Matt Kalish, co-founder and president of DraftKings North America, said he expected tremendous interest north of the border as there is “no athlete more revered than Wayne Gretzky.”
“The DraftKings customer base in Canada has shown tremendous engagement in our daily fantasy contests over the years, and we expect there will be similar levels of enthusiasm to access exclusive DraftKings Marketplace content as NFT adoption in the collectibles space accelerates,” Kalish continued.
Canada’s Scarcity Labs was acquired by DraftKings to help support all aspects of the marketplace, including the Gretzky drop.
DraftKings’ foray into digital collectables hasn’t been without teething troubles, though, after a Twitter user found one customer, SweetBabyNicco, managed to bag five of the limited autographed Brady NFTs.
Other buyers also managed to get their hands on multiple Brady NFTs, it was discovered.
How the drop worked was that potential buyers were assigned random positions in the queues, with those at the front able to make the first purchases.
However, it seems some users, possibly using bots, were able to make multiple entries to grab more spots in the virtual lines and, therefore, a greater chance of securing the Brady NFTs.
Those who were left empty-handed took to Twitter to express their frustration.
https://twitter.com/Albert_D_A/status/1426539227983003649
In response, DraftKings said in a statement: “We have identified that some people were able to join into the queue more than once, which gave them extra chances to get access to buy an NFT before they sold out.”
According to The Action Network, SweetBabyNicco spent a total of $3,250 on the five NFTs and that just days later, four were sold for a combined $76,332.
Despite this, the company said the first drop was a “tremendous success.”
In DraftKings’ Q2 earnings presentation, bosses said DraftKings Marketplace, which is the exclusive seller of sports NFTs from Autograph, will increase the LTV of DraftKings players and lower customer acquisition costs.
“It is also a great standalone, high-margin revenue opportunity,” the Nasdaq-listed operator added. The plan is for DraftKings to mint its own NFTs in the future.
Before launching its DraftKings Marketplace, the firm dabbled with the booming digital collectables space by giving away NFTs as prizes in DFS contests.
This included presenting the winner of a Masters golf DFS contest with a CyptoPunk – a 24×24 pixel art image – that had been purchased earlier by the operator for $70,400-worth of ether.