Tonight, the Los Angeles Dodgers are holding their first-ever Digital Bobblehead Night. At Friday’s game agains the San Diego Padres, the first 40,000 fans to arrive will be given the opportunity to download a Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner, or Kenley Jansen crypto token. The promotion is the first of its kind in Major League Baseball, and believed to be the first cryptocurrency giveaway in sports, according to the Dodgers’ official press release.
Bobbleheads are as American as apple pie. Given away as free collectibles at sports games, they sit on shelves and desks, staring timelessly into the distance, heads slowly dancing along to any movement. But will fans find the same joy in acquiring a bobblehead that lives solely on their mobile phone?
“Our fans are really focused on their mobile devices and digital lives,” said Ralph Esquibel, Dodgers Vice President of Information Technology. “We’re trying to develop a marketplace for our fans to engage with us. “We look at it as just being open to the times.”
Fans will receive a physical card containing a unique QR code alongside directions to a website where the digital bobblehead can be unlocked and added to an Ethereum wallet. Once inside the wallet, owners can search crypto marketplaces to buy, sell, or trade these crypto bobbleheads—or “digital assets” as Esquibel calls them. Through Ethereum’s use of a “smart contract,” blockchain technology maintains a transparent transaction log for digital assets, ensuring these digital bobbleheads are protected and cannot be duplicated.
Esquibel adds that users can spin, turn around, and interact with the digital bobblehead through their phone to a limited extent. But the core appeal of this pioneering giveaway is designed to come from the notion of “digital ownership.” The 40,000 fans in attendance will be the sole proprietor of their digital tokens, which Major League Baseball and its teams are banking on becoming a valuable commodity through blockchain-secured cryptocurrency marketplaces.
Don’t miss the first-ever Digital Bobblehead Night at Dodger Stadium! On 9/21, the first 40,000 fans will receive a @ClaytonKersh22, @redturn2 or @kenleyjansen74 Crypto token to be downloaded and added to their Ethereum wallet.
: https://t.co/36IUWLyXz9 pic.twitter.com/bVh6C5VNud
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) September 7, 2018
“Digital ownership is at the root of this,” Esquibel said. “They [the fans] own this digital asset that is scarce and there’s a finite number of them. So it becomes a collectable. There’s not going to be additional tokens created for this edition.”
Esquibel pivoted to Fortnite, arguably the most popular online video game in the world at the moment, to further demonstrate how blockchain technology is expected to revolutionize the way consumers value digital assets.
“I have a 17-year-old son that plays Fortnite. It’s a free game, but there’s a lot of digital assets that the game can charge for, such as a skin or a gun” he explained.
“But the problem is that the game player really never owns that asset, it belongs to the game. What blockchain could provide in that scenario, is that when you acquire something that’s used to enhance your gameplay, you could turn around and sell it to somebody else. That’s digital assets versus digital ownership. It’s not just about collecting an item, it’s really about owning an item.”
Blockchain startup Player Tokens announced in August that the company had struck a deal with the MLBPA to offer officially licensed digital tokens of major league players—essentially digital baseball cards. Blockchain is already being used by leagues and teams to process ticket sales. Esquibel anticipates blockchain will eventually be used to process the payment of food and drink within the ballpark, and can serve as an enhanced way to authenticate physical memorabilia to prevent fraud within the sports collectables industry.
“When I look at blockchain, I consider it a general purpose technology. What I consider a general purpose technology are those basic milestones that other technology utilizes,” Esquibel said, mentioning the internet or smartphone as two examples of general purpose technology.
“Blockchain is going to be that framework that we’re building additional distributed applications on. It’s definitely going to have a huge impact. We’re really just at the cusp of this technology.”