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Continuing its dive into the world of NFTs, the World Poker Tour (WPT) announced that it will work with Theta Labs to create a Web3-based season pass for WPT broadcasts, billed as the first such product of its kind. The 12-month WPT Season Pass will exist on the Theta blockchain.
“We are proud to partner with Theta to offer users an exclusive way to access WPT Seasons 18 and 19 with the first digital season pass powered by Theta Metachain,” said WPT CEO Adam Pliska in a recent press release. “WPT has always taken a forward-thinking approach to using technology to engage with our users, and this is the next step in bringing more value to our loyal fans.”
The WPT Season Pass will be given to WPT NFT owners for free and will also be available for sale on ThetaDrop. The Season 19 pass will give holders the opportunity to watch episodes live with no commercials, including new episodes which will air weekly from December 2022 through February 2023.
We are not sure what the original sale price for the WPT Season Pass was, but there are currently eight for sale on ThetaDrop’s peer-to-peer marketplace at prices ranging from $22 to $250.
Now, you might be asking, “What is the point?” and rest assured, I’ve been thinking the same thing, too. The idea behind the blockchain-ization of this WPT subscription is to make the Season Pass fully transferrable or sellable. So, if you buy the Season Pass and decide you aren’t going to need it anymore, you can sell it on the blockchain to someone else and recoup some of your money. Or, if it is somehow in high demand, turn a profit (I can’t imagine the latter would be the case).
Not to go all “old man yells at cloud” or anything – after all, I do own some NFTs myself – but this seems like a solution looking for a problem. Is the demand for the WPT Season that big and do enough viewers have that much of a need to be able to transfer ownership of their Season Pass that a Season Pass NFT is necessary? Maybe? When I was an IT consultant, I would say, “Don’t implement technology just to implement technology.” This seems like that kind of situation.
If I bought a Season Pass the old fashioned way, I could always transfer it to somebody by giving them my login info, changing the password before doing so if it’s a password I’ve used with other accounts. If e-mail address changes are permitted (no idea if they are), then all the better. The new setup just seems overly complicated. One positive, though, is that it appears that ThetaDrop accepts USD, so people who don’t know anything about crypto can probably buy a WPT Season Pass without much problem.
Of course, there is a significant overlap between hardcore poker fans (the people who would buy a WPT Season Pass) and crypto/blockchain enthusiasts, so it is entirely possible that those who would be interested in the Season Pass like the idea of an NFT and have no issues with the process.
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