Cricket Foundation — Cricket’s next big thing!
Engaging millions around the globe, cricket has evolved from being just a sport or a hobby to becoming a part of our everyday lives.
Currently, 104 countries are actively participating in Cricket. The brand value of the Indian Premier League alone soared to US$ 6.7 billion in the year 2019 and this is not even scratching the surface of what cricket has to offer.
People make documentaries, movies, series, and even anime on cricket stories. Cricket stars are often seen in TV commercials due to their unquestionable influence over the audience.
However, the cricket industry can evolve much further. The current state of the sport has become a benchmark but benchmarks are bound to be set again. Setting a new benchmark in the cricket ecosystem is the Cricket Foundation, which is introducing unparalleled opportunities by bringing the power of Blockchain via NFTs to the world of cricket.
NFTs present a unique digital offering to sports stars to enhance their reach as well as the relationship with fans by giving them a sense of belongingness, involving them in community decisions, and keeping them engaged with the game. For the fans, NFTs are the only way to provably own digital sports assets and collectibles.
Cricket is growing rapidly and attracting more and more fans globally especially with the huge success of its shorter format i.e. T20. Technology is fast penetrating Cricket, like all major sports, and impacting not only the play but also the key aspects of fan entertainment and engagement adding to its popularity.
Enter Cricket Foundation
Non-Fungible Tokens powered by Blockchain technology have seen a massive uptrend in the past few months with the year 2021 being called the “NFT Year.” With duplication pervading almost all aspects of our lives, an acquired ability to identify and authenticate the original becomes such a boon.
Recognizing the potential, Cricket Foundation has launched the world’s first NFT marketplace exclusively for Cricket. It will help establish the originality, credibility and authenticity of the sport’s digital assets, media and collectibles along with their fair value in the digital ecosystem. But there is much more that it is offering to the sport i.e. the world’s first and only evolutionary cricket network for the digital world.
With the global community and ecosystem partners of Cricket Foundation owning, operating and leading the project, based on decentralised and transparent governance, true democratisation of the sport is in the offing.
Just like the sport of Cricket has four layers — the infrastructure, equipment, match and players-spectators, Cricket Foundation also has four connected layers that define its ecosystem.
The Four Layers of Cricket Foundation
Layer One
A major aspect of the vision is the Cricket Token, facilitating seamless digital transactions. But beyond the transactional aspect, this token serves a wide range of purposes such as acting as a medium of governance to decentralize the ecosystem, motivating actors of the platform through incentivization, and maintaining network operations. Therefore, the Cricket Token becomes layer one of the ecosystem.
Token, along with other available features of the Cricket Foundation such as digital collectibles, ticketing, gaming, auctions, endorsements, merchandising, and licensing, allow the platform to complement the traditional cricket world.
Layer Two
A well-defined technical approach and core components of the Cricket Foundation form its second layer. This includes highly efficient smart contracts that standardize interactions over the network.
There is a wallet provision to hold Cricket tokens as well as the NFTs in a secured manner. It also includes the Oracle system embedded into the platform, providing credible data for the users. The services that Cricket Foundation offers just like the sport itself, are limitless.
Layer Three
Layer three of the platform is the application or product layer which acts as a bridge between all other layers. This is where the user can reap the benefits of the advanced functionalities of Cricket Foundation.
As a core component of this layer, Cricket Foundation primarily facilitates a digital collectibles marketplace offering collectibles from remarkable moments in cricket’s history. Moments like Yuvraj’s Sixes or Dhoni’s signature Helicopter-shot are engraved in people’s minds and hearts forever. Their emotions make these moments priceless.
Transforming these moments into NFTs is one of the many things the Cricket Foundation enables, offering fans a chance to own and represent these priceless moments.
However, the vision goes beyond just being a marketplace. As stated by Pruthvi Rao, the CEO of Cricket Foundation, “The opportunity is not just collectibles. It’s just that collectables have become a buzz and mainstream today. Blockchain is doing to the world today what the internet was supposed to do 25 years ago. Eventually, everything that exists on the internet today will move to Blockchain-based ecosystems, in one form or the other”.
Layer Four
All the efforts and innovation come down to the last layer, the Users. Providing a seamless intuitive interface, Cricket Foundation ensures that the users can easily carry out their activities on the platform. This includes all categories of users such as players, fans, influencers, buyers, service providers, agents, and more.
Leading Cricket’s Next!
Being a Blockchain-based platform, Cricket Foundation is a democratised ecosystem operated by a large and growing community from 11 countries comprising 70 partners, and over 20000 supporters.
The current cricket ecosystem is a siloed network, split across micro and large ecosystems and geographies. Cricket Foundation has embarked on the mission to bring the whole cricket community as part of one seamless and globally networked digital ecosystem. Come, join the cricket evolution!
