Slowly-Forming Alliance between Gambling, Crypto, and NFTs

DraftKings is one of the biggest US sports gambling and fantasy sports companies. It has been in this space for years, but with the legalization of sports gambling landmark ruling in 2018, the Supreme Court managed to set up the framework for further opening of US states for this service. One of the biggest winners so far in that process has been DraftKings. Today, it is one of the most relevant players in this domain and also a company that keeps growing. In the near future, this business, which does not operate any physical gambling venue or provides any gaming services outside of its niche, will open a corporate building in Las Vegas that will house over 1,000 employees. 

Besides that, it is also working hard on increasing its tech capacity further with a range of novel options. Among those is not just cryptocurrencies in their present form, but also the non-fungible token technology that is otherwise revolutionizing the space of online art dealing. With the most recent deal that DraftKings made, there is a definite sense that the ecosystem for online gambling, in particular, is slowly but surely forming a strong bond with both crypto and NFT domains. That alliance holds the promise of even further and more substantial change to come in the same realm and also one that might define the course of the crypto market as a whole.

Polygon and DraftKings

Polygon is an ethereum-based scaling platform. It recently struck up a partnership with DraftKings and will not expand its blockchain capacity and focus on mainstream adoption of nothing short of NFTs that can be customized. At the same time, the company is also likely pleased by the fact that the number of unique addresses on its network broke through the number of 100 million. So, for now, it seems that Polygon is happy with the present deal. On the other hand, DraftKings also has plenty to be pleased about. 

It now has direct access to a blockchain solution that is both suitable and very eco-friendly. In the past several months, the issue of energy consumption of any cryptocurrency or blockchain-based venture has been under serious scrutiny. It appears that DraftKings made sure this is not an issue for their newest partnership with Polygon. Instead, the mechanisms that keep this blockchain working are clearly based on sustainable energy production. 

Blockchain Challenges

Immediately after the acquisition, the officials at DraftKings explained why they were so interested in this blockchain company. According to them, the issues of sustainability but also scalability are among the most important and hard problems any network based on blockchain tech faces. Most analysts would agree with that as even massive networks like ethereum, with plenty of tech solutions on their side, still find it hard to grow and smoothly scale up their network resources. 

However, Polygon promises a foolproof solution to that issue, which is why DraftKings chose them over all other potential competitors. Furthermore, they believe that these advantages are the bedrock on which the DraftKings Marketplace will be gradually built. If that goes according to plan and Polygon can pull it off, then the future playing field for sports betting and fantasy sports NFTs will be very much in the pocket of this single company.

Marketplace for Fantasy and Sports Non-Fungible Tokens

DraftKings Marketplace is not just a marketing move, as many would likely label it just a few short months ago. The entire domain of non-fungible tokens exploded in popularity alongside the 2021 crypto market expansion and bull run that took BTC token price to its record level just recently. The rising interest in NFTs did not occur in perfect sync with that, but it did manage to generate a baseline of interest that kept growing and never really went away as many predicted. That is why companies like Visa or Budweiser decided to spend hundreds of thousands of USD on NFTs that are now literally in their corporate coffers.

DraftKings is going way above that and producing one of those rare examples where a company is building an NFT business that will not try to ride the short-term wave, but the long-term potential of this concept. Here, Polygon expertise will prove to be invaluable, especially their scalability solutions. With it, if all goes without a hitch, users will be able to have access to waste individual NFT collections and still move them across the marketplace without the issue of the endlessly rising cost of transfer or bottlenecks in the movement process. 

Physical Item Partnerships

Several months ago, DraftKings made a partnership with a different NFT platform. That one is Autograph, a company from the NFL superstar Tom Brady. This business is focusing on using the non-fungible token tech to mark sports collectibles from traditional sports athletes like Simon Biles and Usain Bolt. It can be used for other domains, including esports collectibles as well. With Autograph, items can be marked and tracked, but also bought and sold with a high degree of confidence that they are authentic. 

This is a problem that the collectibles market, in general, had for centuries and that is why it employs a legion of experts who try to establish authenticity. That would allow DraftKings to expand even to this segment of the market, cornering not just digital collectibles, but also physical objects as well that are tied to the sports realm. 

Polygon’s Vision

In this new relationship, Polygon is not just a silent tech partner that has to develop and deliver solutions to the much larger DraftKings business. Instead, it will shift toward NFT development in general, offering new solutions to supposedly other future partners as well. That is why it recently built its Polygon Studios. 

This initiative will tackle video game development that uses blockchain as its core driver, but also employs NFTs in some shape and form. The gaming domain alone could be worth billions of USD in a short couple of years if Polygon can create appealing solutions. That is why it seems that the alliance between this blockchain company and DraftKings is just the start of this great friendship across these two industries.