Hit and earn: Indian cricket fans can win as much as $500 a day playing cricket in the metaverse

• Jump.trade, a Sports NFT marketplace, organised its first Meta Cricket League tournament finale for cricket fans.
  
• Play-to-earn gamers in India can earn $500 per day, more than the average salary of an Indian.
  
• Players need at least two NFTs to begin playing a Meta cricket game.
  

It's not just the cricket megastars who can win hearts with their memorable shots. Now, even ordinary gamers in India can ‘Hit and Earn’ through cricket, albeit in matches played in the metaverse, with a chance of winning up to $500 per day. That’s ₹7,000 more than the average salary of an Indian in 2022.

Jump.trade, a Sports NFT marketplace by GuardianLink, organized its first Meta Cricket League (MCL) tournament finale in August, which was played in the virtual world.

MCL is a ‘Play to Earn’ (P2E) blockchain game, where users can create teams of batsmen and bowlers to participate in real-time player-versus-player matches. Users can also form a team and earn rewards.

“To begin playing the MCL game, users need to buy a combination of 1 Batsman NFT and at least 1 Bowler NFT from the platform,” explains Kameshwaran Elangovan, co-founder and chief operating officer at GuardianLink.

Jump.trade is currently home to over 1,000 users who play MCL games everyday, earning up to $500 a day.

Buy NFTs, play cricket

Jump.trade sold 55,000 NFTs within nine minutes of going live, contrary to the subdued market interest for cryptos and NFTs this year.

The first MCL grand slam finale, organised by GuardianLink and Flipkart, was played on 7th August. A prize pool of $10,000 was created, to be divided among 500 shortlisted players. The winner was awarded $1,000, while the second and third places won $600 and $400 respectively. Rest of the prize money was distributed to the players according to their positions on the MCL leaderboard.

Play-to-earn games in India

The play-to-earn games are gaining momentum in India. The Indian online gaming market alone is projected to reach 657 million users by 2025.

“India has gained the top spot in terms of the adoption of NFT games and play-to-earn games, with 34% of those surveyed reporting they have played P2E games, and an additional 11% willing to play such games in the near future,” said Parth Chadha, CEO and co-founder of STAN, a blockchain esports startup in India.

An increasing number of companies are showing interest in blockchain gaming in India. For instance, Tezos India announced a grant of over $10,000 to support blockchain gamers in India. STAN, launched in May, has over 100,000 downloads of the app already.

E-commerce giant Flipkart is also exploring the blockchain gaming landscape – it sponsored the MCL Grand Slam Tournaments’ finale, where it also publicised its web 3 platform ‘FireDrops’.

“Sponsoring the Meta Cricket League Finale was as much about positioning FireDrops among relevant audiences as about learning about the emerging play-to-earn ecosystem,” said Naren Ravula, VP of product strategy and head of Flipkart Labs.

FireDrops, a web 3-based feature powered by Guardian Link, went live on Flipkart on July 22. Customers can buy NFTs on Flipkart that gives them exclusive access to merchandise online and promotional events offline.