Steve Stein on xManna’s NFT gaming platform for sports engagement

0:00i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have steve stein and his team the co-founder and ceo of x-mana steve welcome to the show and thank you so much for taking the time thank you for having me you're very welcome i'm excited to dive into nft gaming metaverses and sports which i

0:24think is going to have huge advantages integrating blockchain i would love to kick off our conversation by just hearing a little bit about xmana what your team's been working on from you and then we can dive into the details sure so x-men is a blockchain gaming and sports loyalty platform and this came about through actual trial and error running live at

0:46macabee tel aviv stadium where we were engaging a stadium of over 11 000 people uh where we simply ran a basic test trying to test engagement how does engagement work how do you connect ad spend to ad return in you know in a sports environment using gamification right and we went to the store down the street we had the cheerleaders walking around holding up some drones and uh

1:07literally we were able to get 20 of the fans in the stadium to pick up their phones and start playing when the announcer came on and said hey play a 60-second game and whoever gets the highest score wins uh we really learned something incredible at that time and what we did was which we went and traveled and met with about 100 different clubs and leagues from around

1:26the world um from the new zealand all blacks to the mumbai indians i mean really trying to understand what their challenges are competing in their different hackathons fc barcelona and so on and so forth with the euroleague um and with that uh uh we were able to understand the concept of you know how do you bring this to market the right way we went live with a poc about 10

1:46months ago testing this out uh just to see how how would you launch this in the sports ecosystem um with incredible results and with that uh we partnered with a company called orson uh who's helping us take this to market and currently we're in contract with a company a major club in south florida we can't say who but we are launching this season which is going to be incredible

2:07and uh we're going to be bringing blockchain gaming to the stadiums like literally one stadium after the other introducing a whole nft ecosystem the metaverses connecting you know real world properties into everything that uh you know uh the crypto community has to offer definitely amazing great intro steve and it's great to hear that you've had such

2:29great traction already and with the increase of nfts uh moving into you know artists it seems everyone on the east coast of the states is who wasn't technical before now knows about nfts and i think the next step is getting into sports and getting into uh large uh venues and i think this is a great next step i'm curious to know a little bit more about

2:52the application itself how is it actually helping fans increase their experience bringing people at the venue closer together in ways that you know there have been loyalty platforms or like engagement platforms before the days of blockchain and nfts that we're trying to do similar things and i'm curious how this takes it to the next level that's actually a really good question

3:16so let me just give you an example of what we're going to be doing in about four and a half five months from now maybe a little bit longer don't quote me on the time but about four months from now we're gonna have a stadium of 15 000 people they're going to take out their phones and they're going to be shooting each other in in a game called man awards and whoever gets the highest

3:34points are going to be walking out with over 1500 prizes one out of 10 people now that's a completely different experience when you think about gamification how do you move people and not just the physical realm but also the digital and we believe that when you when you incentivize people through our what our uh business model is it's uh we're we we believe that you know by

3:55putting a certain percentage 40 percent of our our net uh profits towards the next day's incentives we can encourage people to take incredible action because we're only asking for small engagements they interact in ways that they already do for example forty percent of all sports fans while they're watching a game they're using a phone as a second screen

4:14they're sitting there gaming and that revenue is being driven away from the sports club what we're doing is giving the club a way to simply you know turn the funnel towards them where they already have an incredible ecosystem and incredible engagement rates with their community definitely i i completely agree uh and you might as well keep it in-house you

4:34know if they're already on their phone i could imagine having a shooting game where you actually get to interact with people and you're not just looking into your screen you're actually interacting with people around you using your screen i feel like that would be really fun at the stadium absolutely we've already tested out that concept before and what we're looking to

4:51do now is not to take away from the stadium but to enhance it 95 of the time stadium is empty nothing's being done in it yeah now imagine activating that like a digital node if you would that begins to open up these different revenue streams once the club activates it it turns on indefinitely and what we give the sports clubs is a white labeled loyalty application it's already built

5:13it's ready to go we're going live with it this season and what it does is allow them to turn on a whole gaming mechanics behind it and you want you can ask a few questions about that and you know i have my chief product office here uh randy who can explain that to you and maybe walk you through it a little bit as well definitely i would love that randy if

5:31you could talk a little bit about the gaming mechanics and and how this is so innovative and why it's going to have retention for you know not just people playing it once at the game but playing it all season and for years to come yeah and so i also want to bring you the fact that it's not only sports that are going to be able to benefit from this not only the sports clubs but actually

5:51game developers as well now what we do is we take these skilled mobile games and just starting out with mobile we definitely plan on branching into consoles and more and we allow them to integrate not only cache gaming but crypto gaming as well so the only requirements we have is that skill based it's not casino it's not it's not gambling um so you can take your games

6:08that currently exists in the marketplaces now that many people are guilty of you know maybe in the bathroom or in their free time you know playing a lot of it and now you can actually you know implement risk now they can wager us dollars or they can even wager cryptos against each other and they can even wager us dollars versus cryptos okay and they don't even

6:26know it we have a patent that we submitted called atomic gaming which allows for all the digital assets to be able to interact with each other and using liquidity mechanisms on the back end um we're able to then basically uh uh resolve it to whatever whatever the winner's currency was so we're really excited about bringing the mass market and the crypto digital asset

6:44market together in gaming but then as steve mentioned too with the sports clubs you know they're competing with this 40 second screen time right well what we can do is we can incentivize the more the uh users are interacting with the team content um their existing sponsors you know watching live streams buying gear buying tickets and you can incentivize them

7:04into the gaming you know they can get access to exclusive tournaments they can get bonus cash and other things that synergize their entertainment with their sports uh enjoyments very cool and you uh with the gaming you mentioned like into other games as well i was reading something about the sdk that sort of allows you to plug into any game or people that already have

7:27functioning applications that need to integrate this is it really easy to be able to spread this into multiple games multiple platforms so that's a very great question and that's exactly it too it's our sdk our software development kit it allows for these games to be implemented with having this wallet system having cash and crypto gaming having tournaments and

7:46then also steve mentioned the 40 net profits going back to them with just a few lines of code doesn't take them long at all depending on how much they want to customize the look and feel but i mean it's very very simple process and that's the way we want it to be is they don't have to have the knowledge they just have to have a cool game that they want to be able to monetize and get out

8:03into these uh you know premium fan bases like sports world definitely and you mentioned at the beginning steve mentioned that you already have some kind of partnership with some big club uh that we're looking forward to hearing about is that the main go to market strategy is you're gonna partner with this first club showcase the technology and then other clubs will come along organically

8:25or you're all working on you know getting those leagues and different geographies and you know what's the expansion past that first part so that's exactly it though we've identified the problems that the sports clubs are enduring which is obviously you know the ability to monetize and continue to engage with their fans and what we're going to do is prove this

8:44model out right here and then it's basically a copy and paste to roll across to other sports clubs other leagues it can even expand to celebrities influencers and anything that has a massive following where they want to uh engage and monetize their fan base great okay and part of the platform as well you know with the engagement i saw that there is a token

9:04integrated into the ecosystem the x-man token for x-mana i would love to hear a little bit about that you know whether it's required uh to enter the platform or what are the functionalities and how does it create a sustainable ecosystem for x-mana so it's definitely not required at all uh you can participate with just your regular currency there's even

9:25free-to-play coins you don't even have to contribute any monetary funds if you don't want to but the way our x-man token does support our ecosystem is first and foremost if the teams choose to have a token we know we'll provide a launch pad for that and stake in the x-men token can get you allocation out there similar to how launch pads that currently exist are

9:43structured uh secondly um it's a d5-like mechanism but it's not d5 but you can stake your x-man tokens and we reward with engagement rewards so how you would get these unlocked would be obviously stake your tokens and you'd have your vesting periods and you know what what tier you were in um and once they are locked if you fulfill engagement bounties for example

10:05participate in a few cash games interact with sponsored content or interact with team content you then unlock these uh engagement rewards and similar to how a proof-of-stake blockchain you know requires their nodes confirmations to get their rewards we're requiring engagements because that's what keeps our ecosystem healthy as well you can also enable the x-band token if

10:25you're holding it for a rank discount you'll get a 25 rank discount if you have that enabled and then lastly you can also game with it you can wager it to uh to win more if you'd like to very cool and did i hear you mention that with the launch pad you know these teams and these clubs that come out they'll be able to create their own tokens yeah so if if they choose to or not

10:47everybody's gonna you know how it is with blockchain and adoption not everybody's ready for that but if they if and when they're ready then that's exactly what we do and then what they can do for their fans is within their application the more they're interacting with the team content the value-added engagements or buying tickets or buying gear they can then reward these fans

11:03with their team token and they can have these vip levels that climb up and these vip levels can give them platform benefits they can offer them exclusive tournaments bonus cash or even in stadium perks as well very cool and uh with that i'm excited to see how many teams actually come out with their token and create an ecosystem and i know that there's still ways to go because

11:26this first partnership you have to announce the details and who is this awesome club that that's started to use x-mana i would love to hear exactly where you're at and when that's coming and you know how can the viewers get involved right now or when can they get involved that's a really good question actually there's a few parts to that and we can't say the name the announcement

11:47will be in january uh they will be making the announcement uh little teasers about it as they build up to our launch within the ecosystem so um uh uh it's gonna be exciting we've already uh um we have our our hands in a couple of other clubs that know that we're coming um uh this was you know prepared for quite a long time we have six patents on the technology one of them is already

12:09granted uh so we put a lot of thought in into the process of how do you do this how do you integrate partners into an ecosystem where you can you know help them to connect ad spend ad return how you can activate a gaming uh ecosystem within the sports community which just energizes and engages everybody and and you know completely new way you know definitely and

12:35with the x-man token as well is that coming out when the uh in january alongside that club partnership or what's the timing like on that well the token is uh is uh it's live now um as far as users going to be able to have it uh we think sometime around you know uh january february in that range hopefully where the individual sports fans will be

13:04able to start having access to it so that's in process we're trying to line it up for the actual release of the application and you know we're testing the features and beginning to test the features actually um next month in the stadium very cool steve and looking farther down the road once you have the first club successful and you continue on to expand around the world

13:28what do you think will be the key factor to success in terms of having the retention of the clubs having other clubs call you up and being like we see this use case we want it as well well our focus is to enhance the club's ability for their partnerships and their ecosystems to you know we're ultimately there giving the clubs the ability to turn their their their followers into uh

13:53fans from this perspective of monetization the vast majority of sports fans are extremely difficult to monetize given that the fans exist outside of their own ecosystem they mean they exist in twitter and facebook and all these other places but not within their own ecosystem and by by uh showing a club that's legacy how they can take a a digitize everything

14:14strategy and take one step in that direction opening up a whole new realm of possibilities from chasing nfts for as egg hunts around the stadium taking that to the actual partnerships in the ecosystems and how to engage them not just during game day this opens up you know from from a a club's perspective the ability to be able to take this you know 365 days a year i mean once the

14:36faucet is turned on and so on and and by the way this is not just limited to clubs and sports organizations it's for any any person or organization that has a following that they would like to monetize because we can give them a white label loyalty application with the ability to plug in any game they choose to be able to plug in an ad network to be able to plug in a fintech network and

14:57turn it on that day and be able to promote it within their ecosystem so you can imagine how you can take that outside of sports this is just the tip of the iceberg there's a lot more in the pipeline we've got a lot of other projects we can't talk about that are quite significant that it's going to be a lot of fun um but you've heard us touch on some of those topics here but

15:15uh let's see 2022 is going to be quite exciting definitely and i know that we will be speaking again then for the viewers that are looking to get involved right now to follow along with these updates to hear about them right when they come out uh to get involved in the communities what's the best way for people to learn more about x-mana follow us on social media go to our

15:35website subscribe there's going to be a lot of early adopter opportunities coming along from the nft side from the metaverse side from club tokens from physical nfts signed by players and other things that are going to be really exciting that are going to be in the pipeline so if you're interested follow along get get with us early there's going to be a lot of

15:54things that are going to come out within the first couple of quarters of 2022. amazing thank you so much for taking the time steve thank you randy for the details as well all the best with xmata moving forward i'm looking forward to seeing these clubs pop up and increasing engagement and having fun at the arena and let's follow up in the near future

16:15thank you thank you for having us you