Digital collectible platform Candy Digital is partnering with Major League Baseball (MLB), the MLB Players Association, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum for the third year in a row to commemorate All-Star Week. Highlighting the week’s events is the 2023 MLB All-Star Game, which will feature digital memorabilia given to attendees that also come with the chance to win tickets to the 2023 World Series. 

Strengthening connections

Last week — to celebrate the launch of MLB Virtual Ballpark, the league’s metaverse, as well as the online watch party for the MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball Game — attendees were notified that they would receive a commemorative digital ticket created by Candy Digital. Now, on July 11, all Mastercard users who bought tickets to and attend the 2023 MLB All-Star Game will also be able to redeem a commemorative digital ticket here.

All MLB fans can also mint a 3D MLB All-Star collectible baseball for free until July 31. Upon doing so, fans will automatically be entered into a sweepstakes to win two tickets to the 2023 World Series.

“During 2022 MLB All-Star week, close to 10,000 of Candy’s digital collectibles provided baseball fans with innovative and fun ways to collect and celebrate the biggest moments in MLB, and we’re thrilled to be supporting one of the highlight events of the season again — the 2023 All-Star Game,” said Scott Lawin, CEO of Candy Digital of the platform’s past collaboration with MLB.

“This year, all fans attending the game can mint an exclusive and limited edition commemorative ticket sponsored by Mastercard for free at Candy.com. We hope these digital collectible tickets provide fans with a new way to hold on to their memories and deepen their connection to MLB and their favorite MLB players.”

The partnership also includes the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Commemorative digital tickets will be offered at this year’s Induction Ceremony, celebrating baseball greats Scott Rolen and Fred McGriff. This initiative begins July 10 and extends through 2023, allowing visitors to the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum to get their hands on the digital keepsakes.

In an additional partnership, Candy Digital and the official MLB statistician, Elias Sports Bureau, will host the Candy Code Breakers Challenges starting July 10. Each week, fans can use their MLB digital collectibles to answer baseball trivia and earn rewards, including exclusive digital packs and autographed merchandise.

Normalizing NFTs

Candy Digital has a history of partnering with non-Web3 native companies to build out their NFT (or, as the Candy team prefers to call them, digital collectible) initiatives. Having worked and seen success with media entities like Netflix’s Stranger Things, sports brands like MLB and the WWE, and the iconic image and photography giant Getty Images, Candy Digital’s philosophy of Web3 adoption mirrors that of Reddit’s: keep the jargon to a minimum and focus on digitizing things people already care about in a simple and easy to access way.

Candy Digital has gone through significant corporate restructuring in 2023. In January, the sports merchandising company Fanatics announced it was divesting from the company, selling its 60 percent stake in the company to several investors led by Galaxy Digital shortly following a round of layoffs at the collectibles platform. In June, Candy Digital announced a merger with Palm NFT Studio to expedite the development of digital experiences for major brands like Warner Bros Discovery, NASCAR, and more.