National Football League spent money on blockchain-related lobbying efforts in 2021: Report


As per U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures in the second half of 2021 that is from
July through December, National Football League NFL spent money on “issues
related to blockchain technology” lobbying efforts.
According to a report in October 2021, NFL officially declared that the league was seeing into
cryptocurrency deals to make their way to the U.S. Securities and ExchangeCommission. This lobbying campaign was the first time through which the NFL took an attempt to influence the government agency that look after the financial
securities.
As the records
say, from July till December, the amount spent on lobbying the chambers of
Congress and other government agencies including the White House Office, the
Department of Justice, and the Department of Commerce, involving the SEC was
over $600,000. According to the filings,
one of the main reasons for NFL to target those government entities includes
“federal regulation of sports betting,”. There are no further details provided
by the forms on NFL’s lobbying efforts. Commissioner Roger Goodell who controls
NFL is trying to understand whether crypto can be made an integral part of the
league’s business. Gary Gensler, chairperson of SEC has also been looking for ways
to regulate various forms of crypto.
In September according
to an announcement, NFL partnered with the National Football League Players
Association and Dapper Labs, the blockchain firm behind NBA Top Shot NFTs to “create
exclusive digital video highlight NFTs (non-fungible tokens) for NFL fans,”. The
annual revenue of the NFL is about $10 billion. Each Super Bowl attendee will get a
"virtual commemorative ticket" via Ticketmaster, which uses the
Polygon network.
In January Virtual trading cards and other
digital collectibles such as NFTs, a blockchain-based deed of ownership,
managed to set a sales record of $5 billion on the marketplace OpenSea. Over
the past 30 days, NBA Top Shot has sold $60 million and has a lifetime sales
record of $909 million. Blockchains are like a digital ledger that keeps track of
all transactions of a particular token and are made available to anyone who
have an internet connection. Cryptocurrencies are built on blockchains.

Indrani bose
CBW - External Analyst
INDIA