Despite a downturn in the broader crypto market, sports NFTs are still playing with big leagues, joining in on the action with FIFA, the NHL, and the NFL. John Linden, the CEO of Mythical Games, joined Cheddar News to discuss its partnership with the NFL to launch a game called NFL Rivals that allows players to buy, trade, and collect NFTs of their favorite players. “We're excited on how this works, and there's just going to be a lot of fun ways of what you can do with that and what you can do because you own the rights to these items now that you can actually sell other players," he said.

<br>Despite a downturn in the broader crypto market, sports NFTs are still playing with big leagues, joining in on the action with FIFA, the NHL, and the NFL. John Linden, the CEO of Mythical Games, joined Cheddar News to discuss its partnership with the NFL to launch a game called NFL Rivals that allows players to buy, trade, and collect NFTs of their favorite players. “We're excited on how this works, and there's just going to be a lot of fun ways of what you can do with that and what you can do because you own the rights to these items now that you can actually sell other players," he said.Q

Mythical Games CEO Talks NFT Asset-Driven 'NFL Rivals'

but the sports N. F. T. Market is booming estimated to be valued at about $2.6 billion expected to grow to a whopping $42 million in the next 10 years according to a study by market decipher. So it's no surprise that sports leagues are hoping to get on this N. F. T. Wagon. FIFA, the world governing body of soccer embracing digital collectibles for the upcoming World Cup. And here in the U. S. The National Football League, NFL players association and gaming technology studio mythical games have partnered to launch NFL rivals, a new video game that leverages Blockchain technology by allowing fans to own collect and trade non fungible tokens of their favorite players scheduled to launch early next year. And joining me now is john Lyndon Ceo of mythical games, john thanks so much for coming on. So talk to me more about this partnership with the NFL and how it came about. Yeah so we we were excited about the space and we wanted to talk about to the NFL about really how do you use this technology not necessarily to buy and sell player collectibles but really what can you do differently? How can you engage differently with the league with the teams with the fans. And the idea there is we really have been working with them on a new game. So it's kind of an arcade style game. Something very very simple for anyone to really jump into. You can kind of build your team. But there's new new things that we haven't done before in the games. You can now kind of come in as a general manager and build your own player teams, you can also come in at the kind of team management level. So you can actually come in and buy a team in FT and now you're recruiting the players to to to join your team to kind of compete against the other teams. So a lot of new fun ways of how you experience the league, how you can interact with the NFL players themselves and how you, how you interact with with the sport of football. Yeah. Tell me about this particular game. What kind of game is it and how will people be able to play? Yeah. So we're gonna be showing off a lot more of the game very soon here. But the idea is it's almost more of an arcade style game. So we took a lot of throwbacks from some of our favorite sports games in the past. The NFL blitz is in the in NBA Jams and all that and we wanted something that was very accessible so people could come in, they can collect their players, they can upgrade them but they can actually play a little bit of the game as well. So we're excited on how this works and and there's just gonna be a lot of fun ways of what you can do with that and what you can do because you own the rights to these items now that you can actually sell other players. I think a lot of people especially in the sports world and in gaming john really interested in N. F. T. S and I know you actually have a collection called rarity League and so how is that rarity league N F. T. Collection going to fit into NFL rivals? Yeah, so so rarity League's been exciting. We've actually worked with not only the NFL and NFL Players Association, we've actually worked with all 32 of the NFL teams and the idea there is it's basically a fan collectible so you can come in, you can buy these these crazy helmets that are all fan inspired. So the RAMs could have you know you know for and they can have horns and all this type of stuff. So it is a collection of unique assets. NFL rivals then will basically honor those and say hey if you own one of these you can actually become a team, part of the team management so you can come in and then go recruit those players and it's basically kind of a sub level of the game. If you own one of the rarity league items, what's the draw of N. F. T. S in the sports and gaming world, john why are these industries so keen to make a part of their systems? I think I think a couple of things. One I think the collectibility of physical collectibles has been a massive market for a long time and I think what we're seeing now is the ability to have them digital now and having new utility come out of this it's just super appealing to consumers. So we're what we're excited about is again just ways you can interact differently now and and how you can kind of be connected to this these teams that and players that everybody loves. We do see a lot of people jumping on this bandwagon as well. I do have to ask about Cryptocurrency because I think in this whole digital space right? N. F. T. S with three Cryptocurrency they are kind of interlinked and we've certainly seen risk assets across the board not just crypto but the stock market to take a bit of a beating especially today. How does that impact your business? Yeah so I think we're a little bit different because we're really focused around game assets. Right so we're not necessarily pushing a token. Uh you know for for a particular game, something like that. You know also a lot of you know we have a game out right now called Blanco's Block Party. It's just now coming to Epic Game store, another big big week for us. Uh first game with N. F. T. Is to actually hit one of the major stores but that game is about eight 5% still done in fiat. So again we're playing to a gaming audience um you know the games are made for gamers and they're they're paying with Fiat. So we're a little less exposed than, you know, having having a game token. But you know, the idea around these assets is there's a lot of value in them and people are finding ways to play with them and create and doing all these fun things with it. Um, it does look really fun, I must say, john what else is on deck for your company? I mean, I'm sure you have a lot of growth opportunities out there. We do. We're very excited that we have a lot of, a lot of new games coming. And again, we're picking games right now and partnering with amazing game studios that are really wanting to go deep. So again, it's not just about buying and selling assets, it's really about how do you use these N. F. T. S to take it to a new level. So we have obviously Blanco's coming to epic Games store big Day. We have NFL rivals starting pre sales right now, if you go to rarity league dot com, the RAMs and the Bengals are there for sale and the other 30 teams are coming. And then also we have another game, we're gonna be uh kind of revealing more soon on called Nitro Nation. And what we're excited about that is that it's a racing title that has, its had 75 million installs on mobile with its previous title. So we're able to now take this concept of entities and Web three and bring it to a very, very, very large audience. So we're excited about the future, where this goes very cool john Lyndon Sea of mythical games, john thank you.