The NFT Growth Explosion People Did Not Really Focus On

Tl;DR When NFTs burst onto the scene many expected the space that they would have explosive growth in would be gaming but this failed to develop and instead we have seen the entertainment space not only embrace NFTs but NFT usage to increase across sports, leagues, and utility!

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When NFTs burst onto the scene and started to make their mark the issue that arose was that these NFTs typically did not have any utility whatsoever. In response to this people began to both create and speculate where the utility would come from and the biggest area people believed that this would come from was from video games.

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Game developers furthered this hype with names Ubisoft was by far the biggest name that was announcing plans to embrace NFTs and other big names and well-respected brands like EA and Team17 hopped on as well. As we now know that has not panned out with many large publishers like Microsoft and Valve refusing to allow them and those that announced plans like EA and Team17 quietly scrapping the idea. For a lot of people, they took this as a death blow to the NFT industry even though the space had existed before games were even talking about it.

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The area that people did not pay much attention to but has had explosive growth in the entertainment space. Now that is not to say people did not think this space wouldn't be a big player it was just generally thought that video games would be the first and thus biggest mover. In just a short amount of time, we have seen everything from music being released by Snoop Dog via NFTs, NFT collectibles for attending an event (POAPs), to general ticketing! Instead of being a one-off thing or something that started out big but then died down we have seen it start and continue to grow.

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Last year we saw the music idea become really popular along with sports leagues like Major League Baseball issuing commemorative NFTs for certain games. Issuing tickets as NFTs had been something that was talked about and tested by some sports most notably the NFT in 2021 but nothing really came out of the test. This year alone though we have had two major new entries with the Professional Fighters League (PFL) announcing them and today Formula1's leading ticket provider announcing F1's entry starting this weekend!

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All of this goes to show that the idea of NFTs being dead is just incorrect. Rather the way in which they have become and gone more mainstream has been different than what was initially believed.