A Collecting Evolution: Two Lines of NFTs Enter the NHL World

While the NBA, NFL and MLB all entered the NFT game early, the NHL remained on the sidelines. But that’s about to change, with two lines of hockey NFTs launching.

An NFT, short for non-fungible token, is a type of digital collectible that peaked in popularity during the early days of the pandemic. NFTs usually depict celebrities, athletes or original artwork, and they contain motion, animation and sometimes video clips. 

They use blockchain technology, a type of encrypted digital ledger that certifies the item’s uniqueness and tracks its ownership history and sales data. 

These collectibles can initially sell for anywhere from a few dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, and resale prices can be much higher. One advantage NFTs have is that the licensor – such as a player, team or league – can continue to collect royalties whenever the item is subsequently resold.

An NFT is like a mash-up of a trading card and cryptocurrency. They’re more likely to appeal to so-called “crypto bros” than they are to collectors who buy packs of hockey cards. 

Upper Deck hopes to change that with its new line of Evolution digital cards, launched in April. The company already makes traditional hockey cards licensed by the NHL and NHLPA. 

“There’s a place for digital collectibles, but it was never done with the collectors in mind,” said Jason Masherah, president of Upper Deck. “And that’s what we want to accomplish. We wanted to give collectors who wanted to collect digitally the opportunity to do so in a safe environment and not have to worry if their digital collectibles are going to be around in two or three years.”

The other leagues comprising North America’s major four pro sports were quick to hop on the NFT bandwagon. Most notably, the NBA worked with Dapper Labs to launch NBA Top Shot, a series of NFTs using full-motion video clips of basketball’s best players, in 2020. Dapper Labs also issues football NFTs called NFL All Day, while Candy Digital makes NFTs licensed by MLB.

Until now, there have only been a handful of hockey NFTs. These were endorsed either by individual teams or players but not backed by the NHL or NHLPA. Jack Eichel, Auston Matthews, Tyler Seguin, Thatcher Demko and Matthew Tkachuk all appeared on NFTs in 2021. The Tkachuk NFT, limited to just one copy, sold for $30,179.96, with all proceeds going to two children’s hospitals. The New Jersey Devils, Vegas Golden Knights and Calgary Flames also released NFTs in 2021, usually featuring animated team logos but no players.

“Unfortunately, we saw a big downturn in the popularity of NFTs,” said Joe DiPietro, co-founder of Rare Goods, the company that worked with the Flames to create a line of Flames NFTs. “Cryptocurrency is going through what we call ‘crypto winter.’ And even though NFTs are not cryptocurrencies, they’re different things but use a similar mechanic, they saw a lot less value.”

“Crypto winter” refers to the extended period of weak prices that cryptocurrencies have experienced, which has softened the demand for NFTs. Another factor is the NFT craze didn’t really take hold with typical card collectors. 

“NFTs are almost a totally separate market from the traditional sports-card market,” said Rich Mueller, founder and editor of Sports Collectors Daily, a website covering the trading card industry since 2006. “And NBA Top Shot hasn’t done all that well after a big start.”

Indeed, NBA Top Shot has lost much of its luster. Its NFTs, known as Moments, feature video highlights of NBA players and can be bought and resold on its website. From January to February 2021, Top Shot generated $106.3 million in sales of Moments, with one featuring LeBron James selling for $208,000 in February 2021. According to CryptoSlam, a website aggregating NFT user and sales data, NBA Top Shot had more than 184,000 unique buyers in March 2021. By May 2023, that number dwindled to just 8,792. At the end of 2022, Dapper Labs laid off 22 percent of its roughly 600 employees.

So, it is perplexing that the NHL is now fully venturing into the NFT marketplace, though the league did intend to start earlier. 

Upper Deck initially planned to launch Evolution midway through the 2021-22 season but did not release its first Evolution card until the end of the 2022-23 regular season. Sweet, a New Jersey-based NFT company, is poised to release a product similar to NBA Top Shot called NHL Breakaway, featuring video-clip NFTs called Highlights. The original plan was for NHL Breakaway to debut at the start of 2022-23, though, as of press time, the company is conducting beta testing of its online platform. (Sweet declined to be interviewed for this story.) Evolution hockey cards sell for an average of $15 each, while NHL Breakaway will sell for an average of $3 to $12 per Highlight.

Sweet has the exclusive rights to use video from current and past NHL games for its Highlights NFTs, giving it an edge over Upper Deck. But Upper Deck has nostalgia on its side. The company has made hockey cards since 1990 and plans on using several of its most popular brands for Evolution, including Fleer Showcase and Metal Universe. Another advantage of Upper Deck’s platform is that its Evolution website connects to its e-Pack and Collect Forever websites, allowing Evolution collectors to trade their digital assets for physical cards, comic books, Funko Pop figurines or other tangible collectibles. Upper Deck is also avoiding the term NFT, instead referring to its Evolution cards as “authentic digital collectibles.”

“Unfortunately, the term ‘NFT’ has been hijacked by a bunch of disreputable companies over the years,” Masherah said. “We want to distinguish what we’ve been doing from all the companies that have given it a bad name.”

Whether you call them “non-fungible tokens” or “authentic digital collectibles,” the push toward digital collecting is not so much a fad as it is a sign of things to come – especially for the younger collectors just now entering the marketplace. 

“We now have a generation that has never owned a CD, a DVD or a video-game cartridge,” Masherah said. “Everything they do is digital, and they have no need for physical items. It’s important to realize that there is this movement to digital ownership across the board in different categories. We want to make sure we are staying up with that trend and we connect with those types of collectors.”