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