Last week, two-time Formula 1 world champion Fernando Alonso partnered with KodakOne to become one of the first athletes to move all of his digital property, including photos and videos, entirely into the blockchain.
Alonso will entrust his digital portfolio to KodakOne‘s platform, which will manage the rights, licensing, and protection for his images and videos. With the partnership, Alonso’s fans can also upload and protect images and videos of themselves with him, and they can even make money from doing so.
KodakOne also recently partnered with the Oak View Group to bring that same opportunity to fans at basketball venues across the country. (Oak View Group is an investor in SportTechie.)
SportTechie Takeaway
While the previous partnership between KodakOne and Oak View Group was fan-centric, this deal with Alonso protects the athlete also. In the future, fans will be able to take pictures and videos with their favorite sports stars, upload those shots, profit off them, and have them protected and managed by KodakOne. Effectively this turns any fan a professional photographer.
This also will allow athletes to exert much more control over their own professional image on the Internet. When athletes agree to let KodakOne manage their digital libraries, they can choose who gets to use anything from their highlight videos to shots of them interacting with fans and going out in the community. That image control might give athletes significantly more privacy on the web.