The leading sports drink brand, Gatorade has officially launched its first NFT collection in partnership with OneOf and Vayner3. “The Gatorade Game Changers: Athlete of the Year” NFT collection will be available exclusively on the OneOf NFT marketplace. Through the collection, Gatorade aims to expand the impact of its Gatorade Player of the Year (POY) program. It also hopes to amplify the Athlete of the Year ceremony taking place on July 19, 2022.
Here’s all you need to know about the Gatorade NFT collection.
The NFT collection features 12 National 2021-2022 Gatorade Players of the Year. Credit: OneOf
What is the Gatorade NFT collection?
Essentially, the Gatorade Game Changers: Athlete of the Year NFT program has two primary pillars. The first one in this is the Gatorade Athlete of the Year NFT Pack. Gatorade will release the initial NFT cards as bundle packs of 3 NFTs. Moreover, these will be randomly selected from national POY athletes.
Indeed, these NFTs will help immortalise the recipients of the 2021-2022 Gatorade Player of the Year award on the blockchain. The awards, notably, are given to the most outstanding high school student-athletes.
“Each of these athletes has overcome immense obstacles and adversity to become pillars in their community and achieved tremendous success on the field and in the classroom,” reads the collection’s description.
The open-edition mint of the NFT collection will run for three days on OneOf from July 18 to 20. Each pack costs $5 (0.00327 ETH) and has no gas fees. What’s more, the brand will donate the proceeds from the primary and 8% of the secondary sales of the collection to the Good Sports charity. Good Sports advocates for equitable access to youth sports by supporting children in high-need communities.
Giving back to athletes
The second pillar of the Gatorade Game Changers: Athlete of the Year NFT program focuses on giving back to the athletes. As part of this, the brand will airdrop NFTs to the athletes’ personal wallets. The NFTs are 10 “Athlete Original” custom edition collectibles of their personal card.
All in all, the NFT collection features 12 National 2021-2022 Gatorade Players of the Year. This includes Averi Carlson (Volleyball), Riley Jackson (Girls Soccer), Jacob Murrell (Boys Soccer), Kiki Rice (Girls Basketball), and Gradey Dick (Boys Basketball), among others.
About Gatorade
Gatorade has a long history of serving the athlete communities and first launched the Gatorade Player of the Year award program in 1985. The program has awarded hundreds of athletes with professional and college championships. Notably, many of these athletes have gone on to become coaches, business owners, and educators.
It was back in May 2022 that Gatorade first hinted at its foray into the Web3 space. At the time, Stokely-Van Camp, the beverage company that owns the rights to market and produce Gatorade, filed trademark applications for “virtual beverage products” and NFTs. However, the brand is yet to give more details about its virtual beverages.
