Last week, DraftKings (NASDAQ:DKNG) proclaimed an allot with the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) to give out collections of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Some market observers check potential investment funds implications in the deal.

Notably, the NFLPA is granting the gaming society name, image, and semblance rights for dynamic NFL players. The NFT collections testament debut on DraftKings Marketplace during the 2022-2023 NFL season. While NFTs and cryptocurrency aren’t DraftKings’ magnetic core business concern at this point, there’s potentiality for the fellowship to produce into a major NFT player as that securities industry expands.

Imagine an arcade-style NFL gamy (i.e., NFL Blitz) where you own the playable version of Patrick Mahomes as an NFT. Now bed on an element of peer-to-peer wagering based on the outcome of a twin against another team up owner,” says RoundHill Investments co-founder Will Hershey.

NFTs are units of data stored on and verified past the blockchain. NFTs feature applications with a variety of digitized items, such as sound and video files, as comfortably as pictures. They are not traditional deeds of artistic creation that string up on walls or stock trading cards.

NFT Expansion Logical for DraftKings

DraftKings isn’t an old companionship — it turns 10 years old next twelvemonth — but at that place are already hints that several years from now, it might not looking a great deal same it does today.

NFTs are i way of enhancing that evolution, diversifying the operator’s revenue well out beyond the hyper-competitive human beings of sports wagering. That’s piece leveraging a brandmark that’s highly placeable to sports fans. DraftKings launched its NFT marketplace earlier this year, straight off telling an correspondence with Autograph, an NFT collecting program cofounded past Tampa Bay Buccaneers field general and seven-time Super Bowl fighter Tom Brady.

As Hershey notes, DraftKings clients could live open to not only investing in NFTs, especially those of the sports variety but also leveraging those assets for potentiality upside via gamification.

“If executed properly, the potential is certainly there, peculiarly with a wrapped DraftKings audience that is potential well-fixed with the risk-taking associated with speculative assets same NFTs,” he adds. “From an investiture perspective, the opportunity feels ilk a worthy call off alternative for a society with a depression be of capital and hard currency on the equilibrium sheet.”

There’s an element of cryptocurrency inwards the equation, too. DraftKings customers looking for to purchase NFTs must do so with the digital token Polygon, which is based on the ethereum blockchain. Polygon outperform bitcoin, the largest digital coin, inward recent months.

Another New Rating on DraftKings

Separate from the commentary on NFTs, DraftKings gillyflower landed another unexampled rating today. MoffettNathanson analyst Henry M. Robert Fishman starts insurance coverage of the gaming equity with a “neutral” rating and a $36 cost target. That is implying upside of almost 20 percent from the Dec. 10 close.

Fishman sees in high spirits promotional disbursement — long a point of contention with DraftKings investors — hampering near-term profitability, but notes that disbursement “cements its cover positioning o'er the long term.”

The securities industry is “still inwards the rattling early stages of this war, and the costs of these battles will live with us for years to come,” adds Fishman.