PGA Tour to launch NFT moments with Autograph — Ledger Insights

Tom Brady’s Web3 com­pa­ny, Auto­graph, has announced a part­ner­ship with PGA Tour to launch an NFT plat­form in ear­ly 2023.

Using images and video footage (moments) from PGA’s com­pe­ti­tion sea­sons, dig­i­tal col­lectibles will be cre­at­ed and made avail­able to fans. Most notably, the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from these pur­chas­es will go direct­ly to the play­ers fea­tured on the collectibles.

“We’re on our 1‑yard line and have the length of the field to grow,” said Chris Wan­dell, PGA Tour VP of media devel­op­ment, accord­ing to Golf Week. “This is going to be real­ly good for fans and play­ers. We think it will be a game-chang­er.” This move is part of a wider trend towards engag­ing with fans through Web3 tech­nol­o­gy. Last year, a Morn­ing Con­sult cryp­tocur­ren­cy sur­vey showed that PGA Tour fans were amongst the most famil­iar with cryp­to com­pared to fans of oth­er leagues like the NFL or NBA. Thus, beyond gen­er­at­ing more rev­enue streams, launch­ing NFTs would give PGA new ways of engag­ing their tech savvy fans with vir­tu­al and in-per­son experiences.

The PGA Tour is also fac­ing oth­er chal­lenges with a break­away golf league. It threat­ened dis­ci­pli­nary action against PGA play­ers who join the LIV Golf Invi­ta­tion­al Series. In such a cli­mate, the planned NFT plat­form arguably is anoth­er way to inspire loy­al­ty in both play­ers and fans.

On Autograph’s part, it was ound­ed just last year. it has signed deals with ESPN, Indy500 and DraftK­ings and counts Tiger Woods among its board advi­sors. Nev­er­the­less, it faces com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er plat­forms like Dap­per Labs, who has been the major rights hold­er for video moments.

Rumors of the deal sur­faced in May with a leak about potential

NFT ini­tia­tives with both Auto­graph and Sorare. With its Auto­graph project now released, we can poten­tial­ly expect an announce­ment between PGA and Sorare soon.