Major League Baseball (MLB) recently announced that it will release a cryptocurrency-based baseball game through a partnership with blockchain gaming startup Lucid Sight. The US-based professional sports organization stated the game will be launched sometime this summer on the Ethereum blockchain.
The basic concept of the league’s blockchain-based game will be to allow players to buy avatars symbolizing historical moments in baseball’s history. Users will then have the option to trade or sell their avatars in exchange for built-in rewards.
MLB’s new game is being compared to another popular Ethereum-based game called CryptoKitties. However, the sporting league’s game will reportedly feature classic baseball collectibles instead of virtual cats.
An “Interesting Intersection”
Notably, MLB had been thinking “about bitcoin and whether [it] should accept [the cryptocurrency] as payment” for its products, but “decided [it wasn’t their] business.” This, according to MLB’s VP Kenny Gersh is because the sports organization does not want to be a part of what it considers a “speculative” cryptocurrency market.
Gersh feels, however, that the MLB crypto baseball game, being developed through a licensing deal with Lucid Sight, “is a more interesting intersection of blockchain technology and what they do.”
The MLB executive added the organization had been discussing the idea of such a game with Lucid Sight when CryptoKitties was launched. Gersh then noted that the success of the Ethereum-based virtual cats game further “validated” the MLB’s idea.
Interestingly, it announced its crypto-related plans at a time when attendance at the league’s games has fallen. Presumably, by introducing a game that uses cryptocurrencies, the MLB is looking to bring back fans who appear to have lost interest in the sport.
Commenting further on MLB’s crypto game, Gersh stated:
That is 100% one of the strategic goals of this initiative. Collecting items related to your team, engaging with your team in a new way. These will be event-based things—those moments in sports that happen that you want to remember and cherish, and have a sense that you were there, even if only digitally.
Last month, the NBA’s Sacramento Kings also announced a crypto-related initiative in which the professional basketball team said it will mine Ether and donate earnings to charity.
