National Hockey League Comes Around to Digital Collectibles, Using Sweet Platform

The National Hockey League is embracing digital collectibles, two years after several other major sports leagues aped into the NFT-fueled trend.

The initiative, NHL Breakaway, was announced in conjunction with Sweet, a platform for brands to create NFT collectibles under the Ethereum ERC-721 standard on Polygon and the Ethereum mainnet, as well as the Tezos standard for NFTs. Terms of the arrangement between the NHL and Sweet weren’t disclosed.

Sports-league collectibles became all the rage in 2021, when the National Basketball Association jumped into the arena with NBA Top Shot and the National Football League announced a partnership with Dapper Labs. Major League Baseball unveiled a tie-in for NFT collectibles with trading card manufacturer Topps.

The official launch of NHL Breakaway was pegged for Wednesday, though earlier in the week Sweet’s website was already promoting the new program. A beta version went live in April.

According to a press release, a “first-of-its-kind” feature of NHL Breakaway is “The Trade Lounge” – a “hub of collector community interaction where fans can trade packs and highlights of their favorite plays or NHL Players with others in the community.”