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Casey Schwab, VP of business and legal affairs at the NFL Players Association, joined Bram Weinstein on the SportTechie Podcast to discuss the association’s plans to use blockchain technology to combat sports memorabilia fraud.
“When we think about the OneTeam Collective, and we think about the thesis, which is ‘athletes getting more out of their sport than their sport gets out of them,’ we want to think in the long term. We want to think broadly and expansively both horizontally, like right now with a bunch of athletes, and vertically as we look down the road and investing in these companies.”
Fingerprinting Authentic, Licensed Products Without Barcodes
“Instead of having to attach a QR code or another additional number, which 1) can be counterfeited and 2) adds cost to the manufacturing process, you can actually take a picture of the jersey itself. Because of the consistency of the thread in the jersey that this high-end, high-tech imaging can pick up on, it can now create a fingerprint of any digital product. When I saw this in action … my mind was blown.”
Augmenting Physical Memorabilia With Digital Authenticity
“When you take blockchain and you apply it to physical products, like, for example, NFL jerseys, you have a really interesting opportunity to take a physical jersey, make a record of it digitally on this distributed ledger that is backed by the blockchain and now you can track that jersey. By doing so, you know that the jersey is authentic and you know that it’s actually licensed and therefore it’s not counterfeit. That’s where all this exploration started for us about a year and a half ago … We partnered with a Silicon Valley firm—and we’ve been in stealth mode—to really flip this counterfeit problem on its head and turn it into an opportunity.”
Solving the Problem of Counterfeiting Through Innovation
“I get excited about this stuff because I think it’s bigger than just solving the problem in the traditional enforcement sense. There’s some really good lawyers that I know that do that and I respect them a lot, but that’s not where my head is at. Let’s solve the problem, and then let’s create opportunities from that.”
Hear the full interview with Schwab on this episode of the SportTechie Podcast with Bram Weinstein.