Former Eagles Star Trades NFL for NFTs with New Tech Startup

A friendship that blossomed through bonding over sports memorabilia has turned into what one founder hopes is the next great sports tech startup in Tampa, reports the Philadelphia Business Journal.

And he's getting by with a little help from his friends.

Trevor Paladino, a University of Tampa graduate, is soft launching sportstech startup FanField with co-founder Michael Vick, a former NFL star who began his career with the Atlanta Falcons and played for the Philadelphia Eagles from 2009 to 2013. Vick went on to play for two more teams before announcing his retirement in 2017.

The pair initially struck up a friendship roughly six years ago, first meeting through Paladino's sports memorabilia company, The Player's Locker. When Paladino thought to launch an NFT-driven sports tech startup, FanField, he knew who he wanted as co-founder.

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"I brought it to [Vick] because I wanted somebody that, first off, believed in it and someone I had a good relationship with," 27-year-old Paladino told Tampa Bay Inno. "I didn’t want to be working with someone that didn’t believe in it, and that wasn’t going to bring some type of value to this."

The company has soft launched with a more hard launch coming this September. It will let users buy NFTs that give them access to experiences with athletes. It's a tiered system, with the higher-valued NFTs garnering things like private meet-and-greets and the lower tiers getting access to things like autographed merchandise and digital trading cards.

"In my professional experience, there hasn’t been something like this," Paladino said. "There are autograph signings, or you can bid on certain experiences, but the events we want to do — they would be much more intimate."