Michael Clevenger-USA TODAY Sports
- Preakness Stakes, one of the oldest elite horse races, has stepped into the booming NFT market with 17 auctions for digital assets.
- Footage of the 146th running of the race in Baltimore will quickly be turned into a digital collectible, the first such real-time minting for a US major sporting event.
- “We’ve seen a huge appetite for the growing NFT space and we want to be on the forefront of that innovation,” said an executive at the company behind Preakness Stakes.
- See more stories on Insider’s business page.
The dash towards the Triple Crown title in elite Thoroughbred horse racing continues Saturday with the Preakness Stakes, and the contest that traces back more than 100 years is combining with the new and exploding NFT market by becoming the country’s first professional sports event to hold a real-time minting of a digital collectible.
This year’s Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit is slated to be among the horses at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course competing for the $1 million purse at the 146th Preakness Stakes.
Before the horses line up, an online auction is already underway for 17 individual NFTs that will commemorate the second jewel of the Triple Crown. The title’s past winners include Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Justify. Medina Spirit’s trainer, Bob Baffert, is one of only two trainers to have two horses win the Triple Crown.
“What we’ve amassed is an…
