DraftKings teams up with Alchemy to bolster its growing presence in NFTs
DraftKings Marketplace is uniquely positioned at the intersection of web3 sports and culture
DraftKings, a preeminent digital sports entertainment and gaming leader, has been making big moves into web3 with DraftKings Marketplace, their mainstream-accessible NFT ecosystem. There is an exciting and ambitious roadmap ahead for DraftKings Marketplace, and today, we’re thrilled to announce that the DraftKings team will be partnering with Alchemy as their comprehensive developer infrastructure platform.
By choosing Alchemy, DraftKings makes its latest signal to the industry that the business is serious about accelerating its growth in web3.
With a decidedly dynamic and multi-pronged approach, in less than a year DraftKings has already solidified itself as a big dog in blockchain.
A quick recap on the sports tech company’s web3 journey so far:
- August 2021: DraftKings launches its NFT marketplace on Polygon, and is the exclusive marketplace for Autograph, Tom Brady’s NFT company. Since launch, tens of thousands of DraftKings users have purchased and resold some of Autograph’s most sought after NFTs, with drops featuring many of the world’s most iconic athletes including Tiger Woods, Simone Biles and Derek Jeter.
- December 2021: The NFL Players Association and DraftKings join forces to launch NFT-based fantasy games for the upcoming football season. Gamification is poised to be a pillar of DraftKings’ web3 initiatives by layering NFTs into the expertise of game design and mechanics.
- March 2022: DraftKings partners with Zero Hash to become a Polygon validator, making DraftKings one of the largest governors of the booming Layer 2 chain. The DraftKings team attributes this investment to wanting to “future proof aspects of our business in the web3 era.”
- March 2022: DraftKings releases its first in-house digital collectibles, the “Primetime NFT Series” to celebrate the biggest moments in sports, which have so far included March Madness and the Masters, while bridging to other DraftKings offerings like daily fantasy and betting.
- April 2022: DraftKings and Alchemy announce a strategic relationship; DraftKings will leverage Alchemy’s infrastructure to bolster its minting pipeline, manage transactions and stay on top of on-chain events.
Why Alchemy?
DraftKings believes it’s just getting started in web3 - in the first inning, so to speak (pun, intended). To scale and dominate the complexity of the ecosystem, the DraftKings team understands the need to be laser focused on customers, in an “all hands on deck” mode, preserving bandwidth to invest in creating new and immersive user experiences.
This is why DraftKings chose to work with Alchemy, a comprehensive developer platform that completely abstracts away the complexity of connecting to the blockchain. DraftKings is confident that Alchemy is the only team that can do just that, with reliable, scalable, and accurate blockchain data.
Users can expect many more features and products from DraftKings Marketplace in the coming months (and years!), as the company foresees sports becoming a key catalyst for mainstream blockchain adoption.
DraftKings has a thrilling web3 roadmap coming in 2022, and Alchemy will help power it all. Let’s go!
