Swoops - Fantasy basketball meets real ownership. Draft, train and strategize

Introduction

Ever dream of managing your own sports team and competing for prizes? Look no further than Swoops! Founded by an US-based team that just received a $3.5million raise from prominent investors including Gary Vaynerchuk, DraftKings CEO and even 76ers, Swoops is going to shoot its shot, promising to become the leading fantasy sports game in the blockchain gaming space.

To put simply, Swoops is a fantasy basketball title. Players will collect NFTs which represent the team players, assemble a team, and then manage their very own sports team to compete in tournaments for prizes. This embodies the founders’ vision that sports fans can become the team owners, the team managers, the coaches and finally the players in the sports gaming space. 

Right now the game is under development and the whitepaper is expected to be released shortly, but we already know a few things:

• Player NFTs as Ethereum and later Polygon NFTs

• Player NFTs will have different DNA profiles determining their physical and skill based attributes

• Growth and aging of player attributes as the game progresses. Player NFTs might eventually age to the point that render them unviable and require replacement

• Play-to-earn features for cash games and competitive tournaments

• Potential gambling elements as the roadmap matures

All we know for now is that the genesis NFT mint will be in a few weeks’ time in May 2022. Whitelists are still open for grab in the official Discord and via Twitter activities, and the gameplay hints that you’ll need a lineup to be able to play as if you are a sports team owner.

Team

Swoops is a very new project that is founded by Manish Sinha and David Goldberg. It’s so new that they are actually still hiring to expand the team and work on its development. 

Manish founded the project with the vision to build out this game to empower the fans to be owners of their fantasy sports teams and use the assets to earn, opening up the opportunity for a sports fan to be a coach, a team manager, an owner, and also a player. He grew up playing basketball but did not get very far because of his height and descent and wanted to build this to embody his love for the sport.

David Goldberg on the other hand is a general partner at Alpaca VC which is one of the VCs who invested in the project. Coming from a background of Finance and Law, David has worked multiple roles across financial services and building startups. In his role at Alpaca VC he spent a great deal of the past 2 years in researching Web3 ecosystem and NFTs and came to the realization that there is huge potential with gaming and blockchain. Sharing the same vision, he co-founded Swoops with Manish.

As said earlier the Swoops team is actively hiring right now and have received very good turnouts on their job postings on the internet. As the team expands we shall get to see more prominent figures to emerge in the spotlight.

Partnerships

Swoops has only come out of the shadows since a $3.5 million raise announced just 2 weeks ago. Lead investors among the raise are Courtside Ventures and Alpaca VC, Entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk and even DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and the sports team 76ers. With the involvement of a real life sports team we can see the team is determined to make a dent in the fantasy sports gaming space with backing from the actual sports industry players.

Since the game is expected to have their NFTs minted on Polygon network in addition to Ethereum mainnet we would speculate the game to be available on Polygon network, but this can be subject to changes as the project is in very early stages.

Assets & Ecosystem

From the information available on the discord we know Swoops will have their in-game player assets as NFTs. Genesis pieces which come in very limited numbers will be minting on Ethereum mainnet and as the project progresses additional player NFTs will be minted on Polygon network.

As the whitepaper is not yet available we have no information around the tokenomics on this game, but seeing that Swoops will eventually feature play-to-earn elements and even gambling mechanics, the game is likely to be made with a token in mind. We have also inquired about this with the project in their official discord and they have not ruled this out in fact.

How to get started

Since Swoops is a very new project and is in development there is no playable demo or alpha yet. However a roadmap is already available. Let’s recap from the official site:

- The genesis NFT mint is in May 2022 and the discord community building has begun in early April. OG roles in the discord might be running out but there are ample chances to get a whitelist for future mints.

- Another milestone to look for is July 2022 where a free-to-play version of the game is expected to be available and that will give players a headstart to familiarize with the game and experience the Swoops fantasy sports universe.

- Finally in September 2022, the game will kick off Season 0 and this will be the first season where gamers can start playing to earn money.

That’s it for this week’s new game preview! Needless to say, Swoops is an interesting project to take on the fantasy sports game genre and integrate it with a play-to-earn element and potentially sports betting. If the vision plays out it is indeed going to be an immersive experience for fans to transform their fantasy sports gaming hobby into real ownership of their “teams” and potentially make an income. While the roadmap is still in its early stages and a lot can happen between now and then, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye as the project development plays out.