The Pandemic has changed many things, but one that changed in a way that has led to more excitement rather than disappointment has been horse racing, and specifically horse auctions.
At first, stadiums were empty, just like every other sport. However the sport made the transition to online coverage more smoothly than other sports. Whether that was because the industry was already going through a restructuring to become safer and fairer for the animals already, or because the format simply lends itself well to online betting is unclear — but it became the only serious betting sport that continued to thrive in the pandemic with online coverage and investment crowding over 2020 and 2021.
While races have a lot of attention right now, the really remarkable area has been horse trading. Hordes of new, cash rich buyers looking to invest have entered the market and pushed horse auction profits to new heights to the point where the outlook of the industry has already changed significantly.
This surge is primarily through online investment, which is something that, while welcome, is a relatively new dynamic in an old industry. The horse racing scene never previously worked well online because of the high up front investments and on the ground information needed that goes into selecting horses that will do well on the racetrack. There are just so many elements that go into selecting and buying a horse and many of them are intangible or depend on deep knowledge of industry and trainers.
It’s a highly risky business which also has a very high barrier to entry and is justly seen as a sport for high net worth individuals. Horses are living, breathing creatures that are susceptible to temperament and injury. It makes it hard to get that level of granularity, trust, access to information online in an industry as risky and protected as this one.
But the introduction of NFTs is expected to not only change all that, but to take the advancements in online trading during the pandemic much further than before and permanently change the industry to something much bigger than before.
The security, flexibility and level of liquidity NFT trading brings to horse trading means that anyone can enter the market. Each horse, after a thorough verification process, is connected to a digital token which can be divisible thousands of times, making it possible for many people to own a single horse through syndication. This spreads out the risk significantly and changes the game. It means that space for market growth has suddenly become many times greater, and that investors can be more aggressive.
This is different to simply moving the old industry of horse trading online. It means that the industry has it’s restrictions removed while at the same time conditions have changed to allow a huge amount of money to enter the space — with the technology to handle capacity.
Traders will be able to see every single detail of the horse through its lifetime, and all the details of the animal’s development will be on display for anyone to evaluate.
What is unique about this type of NFT is that unlike many other types of NFT project, it is connected to a tangible real world asset. That asset is something that has a physical utility and also exists within a preexisting market that has billions of dollars of value in it already.
As racehorse trading transitions from being a very inaccessible industry to a highly accessible one it will likely go through a lot of changes and explosive growth. Maxima is driving this change and is positioned as the catalyst of this development process.
While the fundamental conditions for success are already there, the combination of the surge in demand in the racehorse industry and the rapid rise of NFTs indicates that 2022 will be a strong start for Maxima.
