Ready for the future of football? Ludo Labs is taking the beautiful game into a new realm, creating a space for football fans and NFT collectors alike to feel connected to football and its players in an interactive and immersive way. Sounds both confusing and interesting at the same time? Read on to find out more from the creative minds behind the project.
One of the reasons for football’s enduring popularity is its ability to adapt with the changing times, whether that’s been playing style, kick off times, or even the influence of the culture surrounding the sport itself. And now it takes a huge leap into a burgeoning new world, courtesy of Ludo Labs, who have created a collectible card game in which your cards can be used to unlock eclectic, unforgettable experiences and memorabilia directly from the world's top football players – You could find yourself watching a game from a midfield maestro’s private VIP box, playing a 5-a-side with legends of the game, or even choosing the next goal celebration for the hottest strikers in Europe. But its more than just a game… this is a digital football community with a story.
An interesting new world, we caught up with the founders of Ludo Labs to find out what it’s all about.
From the top then, how would you describe the main purpose of Ludo Labs?
Ludo Labs is building a digital football community that rewards super fans for their love of the game through a collectible card game that unlocks unforgettable interactions directly with the world's best football players, both past and present.
Our vision is to create a space for football fans and NFT collectors alike to feel connected to the beautiful game and its players in an interactive and immersive way.
Through massive innovation in technologies like NFTs, we have a chance to build communities and test the bounds of redefining fan engagement between footballers and their fans around the world.
Leveraging the wide-ranging capabilities of NFTs, we have created a digital collectible game in which fans can collect artworks (or cards) inspired by themes and motifs that our team members and player partners loved growing up - anime, music, pop culture, fashion, sports, history, fact, fiction and everything in between. Using these cards, fans can participate in challenges, competitions and raffles which allow them to win real-world in person experiences, personalized memorabilia, and other prizes from the world’s top footballers.
Where did the idea come from and how would you describe the area of the market you want to embrace?
Throughout this year, our team members have independently fallen down the rabbit hole of NFTs and Web 3.0 - the term used to describe the new era of the Internet powered by blockchain technology. One of the most interesting features of this new world, and NFT projects in particular, is the ability to create tight-knit digital communities around shared interests.
For all of us in the Ludo Labs team, football is our number one passion - so our minds immediately turned to ways we could leverage this technology to build something for people like us who are obsessed with the beautiful game. This has been built by fans, for fans.
The approach we decided to take was to build the things we would want to see in the world as football fans and NFT collectors ourselves. Most of the NFT projects out there today only offer collectors a way to enjoy and trade unique artworks, but we wanted to add another dimension to the space: utility. In simple terms, this means allowing our community to use their NFTs to actually enjoy real-world benefits from their NFTs that feed into their passion for football.
This is a new idea which hasn’t really been explored yet, so we are keen to expand the notion of what is possible through combining football and NFTs.
When we look at the facts, there are estimated to be around 3 billion people who classify themselves as football fans worldwide, with 50 percent under the age of 35. This means that there are over a billion young fans who are digital natives hungry to forge a new path for how their world operates. With the advent of Web 3.0, these digital natives are also ready and willing to consume, transact and interact in a totally different way than previous generations, and many of them already are.
That number though, still remains a single drop in the ocean. While crypto markets, NFT’s and other infrastructures that support Web 3.0 have grown exponentially in the last 12 months, we are still so early in what this can become. That’s what makes this even more exciting. That there are over a billion (and rising) football fans alone, that could become potential consumers for NFTs like ours and others.
Who is involved and what makes the company unique?
Our team members come from diverse backgrounds spanning sports management and blockchain engineering. Despite our different skill sets and countries of origin, the thing that unites us all is a shared passion for football. And moreover, we feel that we are uniquely positioned to capture this opportunity as a function of our deep experience in technology and building consumer businesses, alongside strong relationships with our football partners that have spanned over many years.
We believe that diversity and approach is what makes us unique - we are building this as football fans, for football fans, directly in partnership with top footballers. We wish to create a seamless experience for collectors to engage with their sporting idols in a direct, yet organic and authentic fashion. This idea of using digital assets or NFTs to earn real-world benefits is something totally new, and we are keen to see where we can take this!
There's a creative edge to what you're doing – how fundamental is that for you?
Absolutely. The creative side is extremely fundamental – whether that be for our art aesthetic, our playful story-telling and consumer experience, or our technical delivery of the product.
For many people around the world, NFTs and Web 3.0 are a new phenomenon - almost akin to how the internet was viewed in the late 1990’s - excited with the myriad of possibilities that the paradigm shift could bring. That same feeling is something many of us feel as football fans when we watch the beautiful game. And so we want people in some sense to feel transported to another dimension when they interact with Ludo Labs - we want them to feel like they can leave behind their everyday issues, qualms and concerns - and engage with a like-minded community regardless of race, religion, politics or gender and unite under a shared passion for football.
Moreover, because of our deep appreciation of the arts and its power to connect, we felt it was important to use our NFTs as a mechanism to visually express ourselves, our player partners and our artists. Art, just like football and technology provides us a reference of expression to understand each other - and so our decision to use references of different snapshots of time across fact and fiction was integral to the development of Ludo Labs.
What are the main targets – what would you like to achieve with Ludo Labs?
Our main objective with Ludo Labs is to create unforgettable experiences for football fans. We hope to accomplish this through enabling unique interactions and relationships between supporters and their favourite players, while building a new kind of digital football community, united both on and offline.
As part of this mission, we hope to create an accessible and rewarding path for fans to transition into the amazing new world of NFTs. Simultaneously, we want to give back to the causes we care about. For this reason we have pledged a significant portion of all proceeds to go towards an organization focused on developing grassroots initiatives and tackling social issues present in the sport and our broader world. Moreover, we are also working with sustainability platform Aerial to offset carbon credits in an effort to make our project as close to carbon neutral as possible. Aerial empowers people to take climate action and reduce their carbon footprint across NFTs, transportation, and other emissions sources. Aerial tracks your emissions, gives you simple ways to take action, and offers exclusive insights from credible science writers on how to live more sustainably. Aerial makes climate action easy and fun, and moreover, makes it inclusive for each and every one of us to be able to take our future into our own hands.
Your roster of talent you're working with is elite – what's the players involvement been like so far?
We’ve been fortunate that our player partners have been very engaged and involved in our project right from the start. They have collaborated with our artists to make artwork which reflects their passion and interests, and they have also joined our Discord community to directly speak with fans and share a bit of banter! Those little exchanges might be only quick moments - but they live long in people’s memories. At heart, these players are also fans and dreamers just like us, and the reason they’ve been so involved and enthusiastic is because they know how much this game means to people.
How important is it to work with like minded people in this space? Do you feel like you've got players who have a deeper cultural understanding involved in this?
It is extremely important! All of our player partners share a deep curiosity for the new world of NFTs and a commitment to building a new kind of community in which fans and players can connect as equals.
We’re blessed to have a very forward thinking group of players on our roster, and their insights and support really help us stay true to our vision of creating authentic, unforgettable experiences between football fans and their sporting heroes.
NFTs, the crypto market - it can be a lot to take in unless you spend time educating yourself about it. What's a good starting point would you say for people wanting to find out more?
We’ve written a guide for beginners who wish to learn more about this space available on our website and discord - it breaks down what an NFT is and how people can begin buying and enjoying their NFTs. Our goal in writing this piece was to make it as easy as possible for people to get started on their journey as NFT collectors - after all, the best way to learn about a new product is by using it.
As a team, one of the reasons that we love the space is that there is a constant stream of innovation, with many projects pushing the boundaries of what is possible - it’s a space in which you truly learn something new everyday.
Who or what in the football space in this market have you seen do well so far? What's the benchmark in your opinion?
The NFT space is still in its infancy, but one project we admire is Sorare. They are building an NFT-based fantasy football game in which fans can build their own 5-a-side team using their NFTs and compete with other collectors to earn prizes.
The reason we like Sorare (besides the impressive team, partners, and traction) is that like us, they are trying to push (and have already pushed) the boundaries of NFTs. Most people view NFTs just as digital art, but we believe that these artworks can actually double up as digital assets which allow collectors to unlock new use cases and experiences. In the case of Sorare that use case is fantasy football, and in the case of Ludo Labs the use case is direct 1-on-1 interactions with top footballers!
On a separate note though, the concept of a non-fungible token being traded on a trustless basis (eg on the blockchain into a self-custody wallet) can extend to virtually every form of trade - art is just the tip of the iceberg. We are excited to see the different ways in which the various asset classes will choose to interact with on-chain transactions and representations of ownership.
What's the future for football as it crosses into this digital art space?
We see a really exciting future for football in the growing world of NFTs, both in the physical world and in the digital realm or Metaverse. In the physical world, imagine an NFT which you can only collect by attending a particular match. Ownership of such an NFT would be a badge of honour for fans who were lucky to attend an iconic match, and developers could use the extensible nature of NFTs to build things like chat-rooms or limited-edition merchandise stores exclusively for people who held those NFTs.
In the digital realm, we see many crossovers between football NFTs and gaming. Fans are already used to playing games like FIFA Ultimate Team, Call of Duty and Fortnite, and it is easy to imagine a world where NFT collectors can use their NFTs to either deck out their FIFA squads or Fortnite characters with skins inspired by digital artworks they own of their favourite players. We are exploring this very closely and have a lot in the bag for 2022. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll have an RPG, football or even fighting game featuring your favourite footballers (wink)!
The possibilities are limitless, and we are excited to participate in building the future of football in the NFT age!
Head to ludolabs.io to get involved!
