What are these NFT games all about?

NFT games are intended to be a combination of several popular industry segments:

It’s NFT “investing” meets season long fantasy sports, and then combined with daily fantasy style contests and a market place of active users.

Based on that premise, the basic game is setup as follows:

• You obtain player cards either by opening “packs” (being sold by DK on their platform in the case of the Reignmakers Football game.) or by purchasing them on a secondhand marketplace.
• These cards serve as your entry fees (more on that later) for the weekly contests which have some very lucrative prizing structures.
• You build teams for different contest structures, based on the cards you own, and at the end of the week you keep any winnings and still have the cards you entered
• The caveat is you can only use each player card in one contest at a time, so essentially once per week.

How is game play actually setup?

DK has also built their games into a tier system. There is a Core tier which serves as the introductory level (every Draftkings member got to claim a pack containing 6 core cards for free), a Rare Tier which is set at a slightly higher level of cost and scarcity, and then three super premium tiers for more serious players. These tiers are called Elite, Legendary, and (of course) Reignmaker.

The rarity of the cards at each tier grows smaller as you move up to a higher level tier. For example, each “set” has only 1 Reignmaker card for Tom Brady. So, at that tier, given that there will be 8 sets released in total this season, there will be at most 8 people who hold a Reignmaker Tom Brady. We’ve published the Draftkings table here to give you an idea of the published limits on cards that will be minted at the three highest tiers. These numbers are based on player classifications.

The two lower tiers have less limitations on the number of cards which can be potentially be created or “minted”, but so far supply seems to be reasonably tight.

Generally speaking, the idea is that the two lower tiers (Core and Rare) will work as building blocks for players who don’t want to invest a significant amount of money up front to be able to build up cards and have a chance to work their way into the higher tiers throughout the season. As such, many of those contests feature “prize packs” (a player card) for winners instead of cash. The higher three tiers also have prize packs as prizes in some contests, but have much larger cash prizes consolidated at the top.

How do you build lineups?

Once you have acquired player cards, you build lineups in one of 3 structures, which will be somewhat familiar to those who have played DFS before: Showdown, Main slate, week long (full contests). Each contest is set up for specific tier of players, and requires a specific number of your cards being entered be at that level or (in most cases) one level below.

Finally, there are two more caveats that have been put in place to help make the game more entertaining and the give the average participant, though certainly not everyone, a chance to win contests.

First, DK has created a list of 17 “Superstar players” which are further restricted when building lineups. Superstar players can’t ever be played in a higher tier contest, and that you may only play 1 per lineup.

The second catch is that the edition, or serial numbers as they are often referred to, for each player card will be summed for each tournament entry and that sum will act as a tiebreaker. For those that play dfs showdowns often, you are probably keenly aware that this will become a major part of the game strategy.

We’ll talk more about it when we give our thoughts on strategy, but contest selection will also be a major part of playing the game successfully as well. Where do you play that Reignmaker Tom Brady? In the biggest contest where you will probably compete but not be guaranteed significant leverage? Or in the smaller contest where a steady prize is guaranteed.

The contest prizing has already been published for all 18 weeks by DK and again, seems to be more than reasonable for the introductory season. Of course, as with any dfs or sports betting activity, someone will be left holding the bag. Though this season Draftkings may indeed volunteer themselves to foot the bill to help ensure the adoption of the platform.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q&A:
• Are these real NFT’s
• Are they guaranteed to have value in future seasons
• What are field passes? Do they have any utility after the season starts?
• Defensive players
• Players dropped or released
• Trading and Playing as a Team
• How do I list players on the marketplace
• Can players on the marketplace still play
• Are there limits on the number of contests I can enter, and do they cost anything
• Who can play. Generally speaking, anyone who is of legal age and in a location where DFS sports are legal can play the game…except for that pesky CT. CT is still in limbo as they have some unique requirements for anything considered to be a gambling related product.