Ground Zero on ZONE with Sports Rights Acquisition
From the CEO’s Desk,
I came across e-sports around 3 years back and was completely blown away by the energy and enthusiasm in the industry. It was only second to what was witnessed previously in crypto while in Singapore.
Since then, we have been working on building and growing XTZ Esports into a large esports company. It took us 18 months of non-stop execution, experimentation, and exponential growth to reach scale. During this process, XTZ esports ended up training and owning the No. 1 Free Fire team in India and briefly one of the top Valorant teams in India. We realized that a key issue in the industry is building scalable and flexible production solutions. It took a significant amount of bootstrapped funds and R&D to build a remote, scalable production solution to host esports tournaments across several jurisdictions.
It was only after 20 months of working to create core tools did we decide to combine our efforts in crypto and esports to launch ZONE. ZONE is an enabler that empowers the platform to tap into the network effects of existing games, both real-world and digital.
ZONE smart contracts are powered by Reach (https://reach.sh/) on top of Algorand. As an analogy, this is like building a car while the axle and wheels are constantly changing and upgrading while making sure the car is moving forward in a straight line. We are excited by the developments in Algorand and are working hard to make sure everything is stable while working through the current constraints in the smart contracts. However, we are strong believers that this will pay off in the long term.
Today, I am excited to announce a massive sports rights acquisition deal that has taken immense personal resources.
XTZ Esports has acquired the rights to bowling from the International Bowling Federation:
This provides the foundation for the next decade of XTZ Esports, and what ZONE will achieve for real-world sports.
Why Ten-Pin Bowling:
Bowling might seem like an odd choice as most of us view bowling as a recreational sport. However, the numbers are staggering.
Bowling is a centuries-old sport with more than 200 million bowlers who go bowling at least 4 times a year. Of these, 2–3 million bowlers around the world are professional athletes. With the right toolset and the introduction of new concepts, the sport can be re-imagined.
More importantly, it is a very interesting sport that is missing the right global push, and this is what the blockchain family and community has the power to do.
You can learn some interesting facts about the sport here:
The sport is increasingly present in pop culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzMEk9_W6tU
Enabling ZONE for real-world sports:
Bowling is the closest sport to a real-world e-sport from everything that was assessed. This gives ZONE a front-line seat on striking! ZONE is primed for bridging real-world sports and the web3 world.
Potential tools from ZONE
- 1v1 challenges in bowling
- Fantasy sports across millions of professional athletes and aspiring athletes
- NFTs in sports to re-imagine team ownership
Potential tools from XTZ Esports
- Remote, scalable real-time production solution
- Tournament management solution
- Athlete profile management
- Record keeping and archives
Our objective, from day one, has been to move with the community and not restrict access to centralized participants so we can get constructive feedback to chart the course of a product at the intersection of esports and crypto. ZONE users need not FOMO; you are already on the ground floor!
XTZ Esports and ZONE in partnership, now bring in the next phase of evolution with real-world sports intersecting with esports and blockchain.
We had to hold back this news from the community for confidentiality reasons but our objective from the start has been to give the community a voice in this exciting adventure. Extending this sentiment, we are pleased to add a surprise announcement!
AFK holders will have limited reserved seats at the IBF Bowling World Cup on a first-come-first-served basis (Depending on venue capacity). Plus, the owners of Mythical AFK Elephants will get enlisted for a unique experience at the Bowling World Cup or the World Bowling League event.
Who knows, you might meet your favorite athlete or celebrity there.
While we build ZONE as the biggest gamefi ecosystem on web3, a platform that encompasses all of sports and gaming, I am confident the community will share the grand vision and opportunity presented to us all now — Re-imagining an entire sport with new tools and technology.
Welcome to the ZONE!
I invite ideas as we build the foundations of a very large project.
Adi K Mishra (https://twitter.com/adikmishra)
