FINA to Award NFTs to World Record Breakers

Credit: FINA

As World Records are toppled at the upcoming World Aquatic Championships, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be minted on the blockchain to commemorate the athletes’ historic accomplishments.

FINA, the International Swimming Federation, announced it would be awarding personalized NFTs to competitors who break individual world records at the upcoming meet in Budapest, Hungary — as well as a $50,000 bonus.

The meet will run from June 18th through July 3rd, and viewers can watch live at CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app, and CBC Gem beginning at 10 a.m. ET on Saturday. There will also be additional weekend coverage on the CBC-TV network. Besides the NFTs, the competition features a $5.72M prize pool.

Krizbo, a Budapest-based digital artist, will be creating the artwork which will then be minted as NFTs on the blockchain and transferred to the individual World Record breakers on June 25th at the special awards ceremony in the Duna Arena.

Husain Al Masallam, FINA’s president, said he was delighted to be part of this original concept and acknowledged how special of a moment breaking a World Record is for an athlete. Now with NFTs and blockchain technology, those special moments will be portable and permanent.

NFTs are Becoming Big in Sports

FINA’s move to mint NFTs for individual World Record breakers is certainly original, but it’s not the only creative Web3 concept happening in sports. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve been reporting all year on athletes, sports teams, and sports leagues investing in NFTs, Web3, and the metaverse.

In fact, NFTs — verifiable digital assets that live in the blockchain and can be securely traded — are reshaping what can be done when it comes to digital collectibles, memorabilia, trading cards, ticketing, jerseys, and season tickets, and digital keys that grant access to IRL events.

Listed below are just a few recent headlines from Rarity Sniper related to NFTs and sports:

So much is happening with NFTs in sports that many — like accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) — believe NFTs will become one of the biggest revenue generators in sports for years to come.

We’ll have to wait and see what records are broken in this week’s FINA competition and if these exclusive NFTs will be valuable. But considering the historic nature of breaking a World Record and the exclusivity of the NFTs, we think it’s a good bet they will be.