Rario, an officially licensed cricket non-fungible token startup built on the Polygon blockchain, has announced its integration with Polygon’s NFT platform, Polygon Studios.
Fast facts
- Polygon Studios, an NFT-focused gaming and metaverse hub, was launched last month by Indian Ethereum scaling platform Polygon to facilitate Web 3.0 gaming and fuel mainstream adoption of NFTs. It is backed by a US$100 million fund and already works with top projects including Decentraland, Opensea, Sandbox, Somnium Space and Decentral Games. Polygon Studios claims to have more than 300 gaming and NFT decentralized applications.
- Indian startup Rario enables cricket fans to collect and trade officially licensed cricket mementos as NFTs. It has partnered with multiple international cricket leagues, including the Caribbean Premier League and the Lanka Premier League. It also works with cricket stars such as Indian former cricketer Zaheer Khan, South African cricketer Faf Du Plesis, Bangladeshi cricketer Shakib Al Hasan and Smriti Mandhana from the Indian women’s national cricket team.
- Cricket is the second-most popular sport in the world after soccer, and has a fan base of about 2.5 billion across the globe, with India being one of the biggest markets, indicating the potential for cricket-related NFTs.
- Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said: “Our aim behind setting up Polygon Studios was always to facilitate a hotbed of digital culture, which is a vision that we are pleased to share with Rario. With its commitment to making the best use of modern technology to shape fandom for generations to come and change the way the fans interact with the game of cricket, we believe Rario is laying down the foundations for making digital collectibles the most prized asset for sports fans in India and across the world.”
- Sports NFTs have been gaining popularity worldwide, with NFTs of the U.S. National Basketball Association raking in millions of dollars. Teams, athletes and businesses are looking to revolutionize fan engagement by monetizing key sports mementos and memorabilia through NFTs. It appears that Rario is aiming to become the Sorare of cricket. Sorare is making strides in soccer NFTs and recently partnered with Goldin Auction to offer digital trading cards of Belgian and French national soccer players.