Tom Mizzone is the Founder and CEO of Sweet, the labs company behind the SCOR ecosystem. A veteran in building and scaling enterprise technology and a pioneer in bringing blockchain to major consumer brands, Tom has led Sweet to become the partner of choice for global sports leagues and franchises, taking their IP onchain.
With SCOR, he is transforming sports NFTs from static collectables into programmable, cross-platform assets that power gaming, fan identity, and rewards.
We recently spoke with Tom Mizzone, Founder and CEO of Sweet, about the evolution of sports NFTs and how the SCOR ecosystem is turning static collectables into programmable, cross-platform assets.
Read more about SCOR’s vision for “Proof of Fandom” and the future of digital sports IP in the interview below.
Early sports NFTs often end up as static collectables. What do you think was missing in that first wave, and why is identity the right place to restart?
The initial hype around pure collecting and speculation faded quickly because those primitive use cases couldn’t sustain long-term user engagement. Users need real utility and usefulness, just as they have driven growth in other crypto sectors, from infrastructure to DeFi.
We essentially sold people digital posters and stored them in a digital closet. So many projects lacked long-term utility, specifically the ability to actually “do” something with the asset. Identity is the perfect reset button because it shifts the focus from “what I own” to “who I am.”
We believe identity will be one of the most in-demand use cases, giving users a permanent home base in the digital world. When your NFT isn’t just a trading card but a playable character or avatar you can use across games and apps, you stop looking to sell it and start looking to upgrade it.
It becomes a true representation of your knowledge, skill, and engagement. It is a digital extension of who you are, owned in a fully non-custodial way. That shift from speculation to utilisation is where the real, lasting value lies.
With SCOR’s new cross-chain wallet linking, fans can prove ownership across blockchains and unlock utility instantly. How important was it to make blockchain boundaries invisible to users?
It was critical. If a fan has to think about bridging assets or gas fees, we have already lost them. The average sports fan doesn’t need to know if their asset is on Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, or Solana. They just want to know that if they own it, they can use it.
Our goal with SCOR was to make the infrastructure invisible. You connect your wallet, we scan your holdings, and we unlock the gameplay. The tech should support the experience, not define it.
There are thousands of sports NFTs sitting idle in wallets today. Why was it important for SCOR to reactivate existing assets instead of asking fans to mint or buy something new?
We need to recognise that these fans are the pioneers of the modern sports economy. They bought into the vision of digital ownership long before the full utility was ready. Those initial purchases were really just scratching the surface of what the tech can actually do for fans.
Instead of asking them to start over, we want to give them a way to unlock the value they already hold. By reactivating assets such as an NBA Top Shot moment or a CR7 collectable, we are proving that their early belief was justified.
We are showing them that the NFT they bought two years ago wasn’t the finish line. It was just the entry ticket. Now, through SCOR, we can finally deliver the deep, game-changing benefits of Web3 that were promised from the outset.
You describe SCOR as a protocol for programmable sports IP. When you speak with teams and leagues, what part of that vision resonates most with them?
Control, protection, and perpetual revenue. In an AI-driven world, teams and leagues are realising that their IP isn’t just a product. It is training data. Faces, motion, voice, and signature behaviours can now be scraped and replicated at scale, often without attribution or compensation.
So programmable IP isn’t only about monetisation anymore. It is about preserving sovereignty over identity. In the physical world, once a jersey is sold, the team never sees another penny from that item, no matter how many times it is resold.
In the AI world, the risk is even greater. Once identity data is copied, it can circulate indefinitely with no economic or legal link back to the rights holder. With programmable IP, assets become controlled digital roots.
What resonates most is the shift from static assets to living, governed digital entities. Teams, leagues, and athletes appreciate that their IP can have built-in rules, attribution, and royalty logic that execute automatically, and that derivative uses in games, media, or AI-generated experiences remain verifiable and monetised.
More than anything, they love that their IP can safely become an active participant in a global digital economy, whether in AI, gaming or elsewhere, generating revenue 24/7 while remaining protected and attributable to the people who created its value.
Looking ahead, do you see the future of sports NFTs being less about speculation and more about proving fandom and unlocking real utility?
Absolutely. Speculation is not the backbone of a healthy ecosystem. Proof is. The future is Proof of Fandom. If your onchain history shows you have held a team asset for three years, attended five games in 2026, and played in multiple Flappy Racquet tournaments on SCOR every week, that verifiable record offers insight into the kind of fan you are.
As a fan, when you are able to prove you were at the championship game, prove you have supported a rookie since day one, or prove you have shown up week after week at the top of the SCOR leaderboard, it creates a resume of who you are as a fan.
That resume can earn you priority ticket access, exclusive drops, voting rights, and enhanced gameplay. All of these flow from provable fandom. When utility is tied to proof, value stabilises for everyone involved.
Interoperability has been a long-standing promise in crypto. What makes this moment the right one to finally deliver it for sports fandom?
The infrastructure has finally caught up with the vision. A few years ago, moving assets between chains was a nightmare for the user experience. Now, with better wallet standards and faster L2 solutions, we can execute cross-chain logic in milliseconds.
Culturally, the “walled garden” era is ending. Gamers and fans are tired of their assets being locked in one game or app. They demand that their digital property be portable, and for the first time, the tech stack is robust enough to deliver that without friction.
And perhaps even more importantly, rights holders are entering a new age of digital rights protection. They are quickly realising that walling off their IP harms them. They are waking up to the value of letting a fan take their digital asset from one environment to another, as it increases the asset’s utility and, by extension, its ability to generate revenue and fan insights they can benefit from.
How did you balance adding powerful on-chain functionality with keeping the experience simple enough for non-crypto-native sports fans?
The user experience must come first. If it isn’t fun, fast, and rewarding, nothing else matters. People don’t think about processors when they use their phone or about MP3 codecs when they play music. They simply experience great products. Web3 should work the same way.
The interface should feel like the best games and platforms people already use, while complex blockchain mechanics such as wallet creation, minting, transfers, and smart contracts run silently in the background. Power users can dive deeper and take full control if they want, but that level of complexity should always be optional.
Fun and simplicity are the real product. The tech’s job is to quietly make everything verifiable and reliable without ever getting in the way. The entire Web3 ecosystem scales when it simply delivers the benefits behind the scenes without interfering with the user experience.
SCOR unlocks NFT utility through gaming. Why do you see gaming as the most natural environment for activating on-chain sports fandom?
Because sports are games, the transition from watching a match to playing a sports-themed game is seamless for fans. Both experiences are driven by competition. Watching sports is passive and entirely dependent on how a team or athlete performs, while gaming is active, with you making decisions, applying strategy, and competing based on your own skill.
It gives fans a way to use the assets they collect, not just hold them. When NFTs integrate into gameplay and owning a specific asset provides real strategic advantages, you turn that fandom into something interactive and earned.
It transforms passive supporters into active players, bringing their onchain identity and loyalty to life through play and enabling their fandom to be meaningfully rewarded.
With verifiable on-chain fandom, how does this change the way teams or platforms can measure and reward genuine fan engagement?
Verifiable onchain fandom shifts the value chain back to where it belongs, with sports properties and fans themselves. Today, teams and athletes rely on third-party platforms to engage and reward their audiences, while fans are completely excluded from the billions of dollars in value they generate for the sports ecosystem.
SCOR changes that paradigm entirely. Onchain engagement creates an immutable ledger of fandom, a unified, verifiable fan profile. Right now, a team might know who bought a ticket, but they don’t know whether that person watches every away game on TV, whether a guest bought merchandise, or whether that fan spends hours playing sports-themed games.
Onchain fandom connects all of that. Teams can finally understand the full value of a fan across the entire ecosystem and reward those who truly show up. It means Super Bowl tickets go to the most committed fans, not just whoever gets lucky in a lottery. It turns engagement into a meritocracy.