In Conversation with Sidarttha Bezbora, Co-Founder & CEO at VOAX.co
Sidarttha Bezbora on Reimagining the Future of Crypto Markets with VOAX.co
Sidarttha Bezbora is a technology-savvy, enterprising, award-winning growth digital product & business leader (CSPO) with 20+ years' wealth of experience in building & delivering innovative design/UX-led D2C & B2B digital products & growth partnerships across mobile entertainment, mobile gaming, esports, fintech, blockchain, NFTs, digital banking, digital payments, e-commerce marketplaces, and conversational AI/NLP/ML. He is a self-starter & growth hacker who has successfully built & scaled products to 100+ million users for organizations to facilitate strategic growth and innovations.
Currently, he serves as the CEO of Voax.co. VOAX is a curated, storified, vernacular multi-sports & esports NFT & Metaverse platform for players, clubs, leagues, federations, sports brands, fans & NFT investors, where original, licensed metaverse ready digital collectables & moments can be purchased, sold and traded securely on the blockchain.
Q | Tell us more about your start-up – Metavoax. VOAX is a sports NFT platform for fans and collectors. Can you explain this platform and what it does in detail to our audience?
Metavoax Tech Inc is a US -Delaware HQ entity, launched by Indian Founders Sidarttha Bezbora (CEO), Gaurav Raj Thakur (President) & Saurav Dwivedi (CTO) with our development centre in Bengaluru, India. Metavoax, a sports tech /Web3 start-up, is currently part of Hype Sports Accelerator, Web3 GVA batch of 2022. We have already closed our pre-seed round and looking to finalize the seed round in the coming months. We are always looking for like-minded investors to be a part of our journey.
Metavoax provides innovative digital products & tech solutions to the sports & esports ecosystem around the globe, focusing on fan engagement, gamification, commerce, NFT, Metaverse, and XR.
VOAX is our flagship product. It's a metaverse-ready, utility-driven, officially licensed digital collectables platform, driving fan engagement, monetization & growth for esports & sports brands. It allows clubs, leagues, federations, OTT players, broadcasters, sports brands & players to securely purchase, sell, and trade original, licensed metaverse-ready digital collectables & moments. The platform is built on a polygon chain with the ability to drive local fiat payments.
For sports brand owners, NFT content enables ownership, prevents revenue leakage, content piracy, drives fan engagement, and lifelong revenues directly from fans.
With both Metavoax and Voax, we are helping the sports & esports ecosystem players onboard the Web3 & Metaverse bandwagon by providing apt solutions and tools to drive and grow their fan engagements.
Q | Can you share your thoughts on how NFTs can be used to boost fan engagement in the sports industry?
Since the launch of CryptoKitties in 2017, NFTs have become much more well-known, and over $800 billion is predicted to be traded in the industry in the next two years. NBA Top-shot rose to fame with the sale of NBA moments in 2021 for almost $900 million in the NFT marketplace. This boosted the digital collectibles market, and sports brands seriously started thinking about fan engagement.
Many fan engagement use cases are being tried with NFTs today. Engagement can take the form of watching or going to live games, purchasing goods, or signing events. Sports teams and leagues have the potential to increase revenue since fans are always excited to feel closer to their favourite teams and players.
Sports leagues, in particular, have realized the importance of fan interaction and have developed platforms where fans can purchase, possess, and exchange digital mementos. The National Basketball League's NBA Top Shots NFT marketplace, where fans can buy, sell, and trade basketball video clips, is one well-known example. Each of the NBA Top Shot moments—video clips posted on the platform—displays a different moment from a basketball game.
The Web3 area is being expanded by real-world industries like collectibles, thanks to fan engagement networks. The inclusion of contemporary ways for fans to interact with their favourite teams and players, as well as the creation of new revenue streams for sports leagues, make NFTs a perfect approach to draw in younger, more tech-savvy people. There is an excellent opportunity for businesses in the sports industry to promote blockchain-based assets to their customers because 76% of die-hard sports fans globally are interested in knowing more about NFTs.
By putting offline activities online, NFTs can potentially transform the sports industry. Fans used to trade printed-out images of their favourite players, cards, footballs, and t-shirts that their favourite players had signed. Younger fans will discover new ways to interact with their favourite clubs and players using blockchain technology as the world becomes more digital.
Q | VOAX has partnered with many sports brands to launch their NFTs. Can you share your experience on what exactly you did do with some of these brands?
We started last year by onboarding a master content provider from Spain, who provided us with some Soccer, F1, MMA, and Tennis videos with limited rights to create and launch NFTs. But the challenge with these NFTs was that the brands could not directly promote them as they were from secondary rights holders. Another major challenge in accessing bigger brands was that they were asking for upfront minimum guarantees, which was not making business sense as a start-up. With our past experience in the mobile content industry, we were able to navigate and directly negotiate with some major sports brands and onboard them. Some of the major sports IPs we have partnered with for launching NFTs are:
1) Grand Prix Badminton League, India (First Blockchain-based League): This was a more solutioning opportunity where we enabled our platform on the league's side and minted their NFTs in INR. They sold mementos, trophies, player cards, and moments.
2) Nacional Lucha Libre, Mexico's Leading Wrestling League: As their Metaverse partner, we are launching their NFTs on our platform across metaverse-ready, utility-driven 3D cards and moments. We are also helping them to strategize their unique content as NFTs and for the Metaverse.
3) Kedar Jadhav, India's National Level Cricketer: We are launching a series of NFTs for his 1.5 million fans across social media. We have created a set of 5 unique categories of immersive collectible cards with utilities that his fans can own and trade.
4) Crowd Control Esports (Major Esports League): 'AAYO PokeCon', India's first LAN Pokemon Unite Tournament, is the first of its kind 3rd party LAN event for Pokemon Unite across the globe. Pokemon Unite was launched last year in September 2021. Since its debut, apart from PokeCon, the only other LAN of this scale is the Pokemon Unite World's, where India was also a participant. It's also unique because it's a one-of-a-kind esports festival, where the focus is not just on competition but also on celebration and creation. Pokemon Unite is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game released for Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. Reportedly, the game has been downloaded more than 70 million times across all platforms globally as of April 2022 and continues to grow.
AAYO PokeCon, is attracting a lot of attention as it is expected to be India's largest esports festival because of the sheer footfall that is expected and the theme where the company is presenting esports as an experience. The finale (online) date is 15th – 16th October 2022, while the finale (Event-LAN) date is 21st -23rd October 2022. The tickets for the same are going live from 27th September 2022. The digital collectibles like NFT tickets, moments, wearables and 3D cards are being powered by VOAX.
Q | More than 8,000 different kinds of sports are being played across the world today. VOAX has already launched NFT collectibles related to cricket, badminton, wrestling, and basketball. What other sports are you planning to launch?
When we started VOAX, we saw Basketball, Football and a couple of sports already picking up in terms of NFTs. We realized there are multiple sports, approximately 8000 various sports are listed on Wikipedia, and every sport has a fan base. We are targeting more than 15 sports by next year. It all depends on how soon we can get the NFT rights for these sports and in which geographies.
Q | I am sure the cricket fans in our audience would love to know more about the Kedarverse Genesis Digital Collection and how they can collect such NFTs.
We at VOAX announced a collection of 777 cricket-based NFTs in collaboration with Kedar Jadhav, a renowned name in the Indian cricket & IPL fraternity. The upcoming NFT collection will offer a slew of utilities to its holders, including a one-on-one video call with the renowned cricketer, a discount on Punit Balan – Kedar Jadhav Cricket Academy, discounted whitelist spots for the next series of metaverse wearables, and much more.
The genesis collection will be launched in 5 tiers starting with the entry-level Silver, Gold, Diamond, Red Diamond and the top tier of Tanzanite. The early holders will have several additional benefits. Fans can visit our website VOAX.co to own these NFTs starting October.
Q | Many of us are well aware of the concept of digital collectables. However, are there any other ways NFTs in the sports industry could create value for collectors and fans?
The NFT market is still in its infancy, and new use cases are being explored for fan engagement. Although the exact function that NFTs will play in the future is unknown, the fact that they are becoming more valuable than just digital collectibles suggests that they will be prominent and with the Metaverse around, the use cases will grow immensely in the sports industry.
Let's understand what NFTs can do:
NFTs give users complete control over their assets and evidence of their ownership.
NFTs are exclusive cryptographic tokens only available on blockchains and cannot be copied.
NFTs can represent real-world objects like artwork and real estate. These physical assets can be "tokenized," which improves trading efficiency while lowering the risk of fraud.
NFTs can be used to represent a variety of things, including people's identities and property rights.
NFTs have drawn the attention of collectors as their value, which first rose but has now calmed.
We are looking at many other use cases from raising funding for our start-up, including NFT ticketing, NFTs as a club pass to play to earn games, real estate ownership, sponsoring sports events, and more.
With the growth and adoption of the Metaverse, sports NFTs will see significant use cases. Data continuity is usually one of the Metaverse's most crucial characteristics. Sports fans can move between virtual worlds without difficulty, bringing their digital belongings with them in the same manner that individuals move their actual belongings to a new city. Virtual things in the Metaverse can be individually identified, bought, and traded on NFT marketplaces.
Q | Do you think NFT ticketing could be the future of the sports industry?
Yes, definitely. Tickets that can be verified via blockchain technology can reduce fraud and benefit fans. Now, major sporting events are thinking about adopting them. The traditional ticketing system has its share of problems, including scalping, fake tickets, and illegal reselling. This should not come as a surprise coming from a sector that has hardly evolved beyond digital barcodes over the past ten years.
NFT ticketing brings a whole new experience to the sports fans; some of them are:
To encourage customers to collect them, brands can design these NFT tickets that resemble works of art and tell the tale of an event.
NFT tickets can validate the owner and show the validity of each ticket.
When a ticket holder resells an NFT ticket, they receive a portion of the proceeds.
They have access to information that could improve future events.
They can send out tickets by SMS, email, and WhatsApp
NFT tickets can be traded in the secondary market.
The historical value of the NFT tickets can be mind-boggling.
These tickets also work as a VIP pass; the holder of an NFT ticket may get access to utilities like future events, benefits, discounts, meet and greet their favourite player or team and many more use cases.
Q | According to the reports released by Deloitte, sports NFTs are expected to generate over $2 billion in transactions in 2022. What do you think would be the future of sports NFTs?
NFTs have the potential to significantly change the sports fan experience, opening up new revenue and engagement opportunities for sports and entertainment companies in the near future.
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique, non-interchangeable digital asset stored on a blockchain. By limiting the number of owners of an asset to just one, NFTs enable content producers to introduce a new kind of scarcity into the digital space. NFTs are anticipated to support value exchange in Web3, a more decentralized version of the internet now under construction that includes interoperable platforms, along with many other types of digital content ownership. A metaverse or a collection of metaverses, which are virtual landscapes that allow users to switch between various experiences effortlessly, may be built on top of Web3.
Digital collectibles will be an essential part of the overall NFT ecosystem as more and more content will move into the blockchain. One great example is social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube are already starting to test the adoption of NFTs for their creator economy. With this, they are enabling content on chain and promoting ownership and trading, which will generate revenues for content owners across all genres, including sports.
We have all seen how the NFT market crashed along with cryptos, and NFTs without utilities will have no place. Hence gamification and utilities around each NFT will be critical in the sports world for engagement and growth. Sports brands are raring to jump into this new world of NFTs and the Metaverse but are also cautious about jumping. Developing critical utilities and gamification will have a significant role, and marketing teams will need to create massive value for the fan to own NFTs. The NFT flipping economy will move towards a utility-driven economy with real value and experiences.
NFT ticketing is a significant area which will see massive adoption. The NFT ticket in the future will be used more as a single pass, something like an amazon prime service. Whoever holds that for long will continue to get benefitted from utilities and benefits in the future. Think of it like insurance; the holder will get lifelong benefits and access to rare premium opportunities like events, merch, digital collectibles, meet and greet with players, one on one zoom call with their favourite player even revenue share of some collectibles.
With Meta, Microsoft and other big players entering the Metaverse world, an Open Metaverse with a lot of immersive content and NFTs will play an essential role for the sports brands. Today the young fans are already moving away from the sport, and to engage them; sports brands have to adopt this whole new world of Metaverse sooner or later.
Also, every piece of digital content produced before, during, and after the game will be displayed as an NFT in some form inside the Metaverse. The content creator economy is already booming, and content created by fans to players as NFTs will boom. Another important area is commerce inside the Metaverse for these sports brands, from avatars to digital and physical items that can be bought and sold.
Quite excited to see this space evolve and grow into a massive new ecosystem for generations to come.