The National Football League will be teaming up with Mythical Games to bring fans a mobile game based around NFTs. The game will be called NFL Rivals and will feature all 32 NFL teams. NFTs have been making their way into games for some time and the NFL is just the most recent company to produce a game featuring the blockchain software.
NFL Rivals is set to be a free-to-play game where everyone will start out with an NFL team when the game launches. From there, players can challenge other players or utilize the single-player option to level up their team and win digital assets. The game is currently expected to release next year and could grow greatly from this initial expectation.
Billy Shautz, the Executive Producer at Mythical Games, said the game will have “arcade-style” 3D models of all 32 teams in the NFL. The game will focus largely on team building by utilizing NFT and blockchain tokens. Since the game is still very early in development, there is not much information that is available to the NFL Rivals community. Despite the early development, Shautz did say they are planning to include Ethereum, one of the largest available cryptocurrencies, in the game.
Joe Ruggerio, Senior Vice President of Consumer Products for the NFL, discussed the potential for NFTs when he said “We’re really bullish on the potential of blockchain technology to drive future fan engagement. We look at this as a real long-term opportunity,” In November of 2021, the NFL utilized their investment arm 32 Equity to contribute $150 million to Mythical Games. This investment indicates that the NFL has likely been looking to work closely with Mythical Games for some time.
As the NFL begins to move into both mobile gaming and NFTs, fans should not be surprised to see other large companies choosing to do the same.