Durban, 2nd July 2021: Our Sharks supporters are recognised as some of the most passionate and loyal supporters in the sporting world. This is what makes our team and city unique and we are committed to ensuring that we create platforms and experiences that are beneficial to our fans and which further enhances our brand on a global platform.
The Jonsson Kings Park matchday experience has for many years been the hallmark of the Sharks experience and has provided many memorable moments for our fans. We recognise that this experience must be expanded beyond game day and needs to incorporate the latest leading technology to enable our fans to increase and improve their engagement with the brand and players.
We are therefore excited to announce our inaugural auction of NFT memorabilia on Tuesday, 6th July 2021. NFTs have recently been in the news when artists and musicians have sold their digital assets. Our fans have always been interested in acquiring unique merchandise and experiences and NFT technology now allows us to make these memorabilia and experiences available to our fans globally.
By acquiring merchandise and experiences using NFTs we provide fans with the ability to easily participate in auctions and to easily trade these items in the future. Using smart NFT contracts we are able to combine real world items with digital assets and to ensure the integrity of items that are sold to our fans.
This approach is a world first in rugby and is testament to the commitment of our Sharks management team and our new controlling shareholder MVM Holdings to ensure that the Sharks are recognised as one of the leading sport franchises internationally.
We will auction three items on Tuesday and the successful bidder will have the ability to store the acquired items in the Sharks NFT vault at Jonsson Kings Park. The items that will be auctioned are a signed Sharks jersey branded NFT 1, the signed shoes of the captain of the team to play against the British and Irish Lions on Wednesday, 7th July, and a signed photo of the Cell C Sharks team to play against the British and Irish Lions. The last NFT will also contain a video clip from the locker room when the Cell C Sharks team performs its post-match war cry, something that is exclusive to the team and is not often seen outside the confines of the team changeroom.
Successful bidders will receive the smart NFTs in their crypto wallets and these NFTs are freely transferable. The NFTs will have pictures of the real-world items and in the case of the picture NFT this will contain the picture and the video of the team war cry. NFT owners will have the ability to request that the items are transferred out of the vault to them if required.
To participate in the auction fans will be required to register online at www.sharks.fanfire.ai. Assisted bids will be available where required.
The NFT auction is the first NFT auction and we plan to enable supporters to acquire unique merchandise and memorabilia using this NFT platform on a regular basis. In addition, the platform will be expanded to further incorporate other exciting advances in the future to elevate our fan engagement. Our aim is to provide supporters with a range of NFT merchandise that will enable all supporters to participate and experience the benefits of our fan journey.
10% of the auction proceeds will be contributed to our player development program and our smart NFT contract provides that 10% of all future resales of these NFTs are contributed to The Sharks for use in rugby development.
ENDS.