For 22 years, Spartan has attracted extreme athletes to extreme events, including the notorious Death Race, a 72-hour competition that’s included pushing a 500-pound sled up a mountain and carrying a sandbag for 26.2 miles.
With the launch of its NFT Unbreakable Pass, the company is giving 15,000 of its most dedicated fans the chance to participate in the Death Race and 450 other competitions in 50 countries for up to nine years.
They’ll also be granted the right to have their ashes scattered in Sparta, with their names memorialized on a 35-foot-tall metal statue that the company is building to commemorate the Spartans killed in the Battle of Thermopylae, made famous in the 2006 movie 300, starring Gerard Butler.
Butler, who was gifted an NFT, and Spartan founder Joe De Sena have committed to doing exactly that. So far, a handful of devoted fans have agreed to join them.
“Gerard Butler said, ‘I am all in. I’m getting buried there with you.’ But there was a big contingent that was like, ‘You’re crazy. I don’t wanna get buried there,’” De Sena told Fortune.
The Unbreakable Pass went on sale this week for $2,700 through a whitelist of the brand’s biggest supporters, but the price will soon increase to $3,000 and rise incrementally until the offer ends in the first week of January—or passes sell out.
When it came to creating the Unbreakable Pass, especially as an NFT, De Sena said it was a chance for the company to push itself like race participants do.
“I think it’s easy when you’re in business to become complacent, and just sit by the sidelines,” De Sena said. “We’re always having fun creating new things.”
Those who mint the NFT will be asked to keep pushing themselves. To renew the pass, they’ll be required to attend the yearly Be Unbreakable event, which is exclusive for NFT holders, in the initial three years that the pass is valid.
Still, because the pass is an NFT, those who lose interest always have the option of selling it on a marketplace like OpenSea.
De Sena said the company sold more than 1,000 of the passes in the first 48 hours they were available, far surpassing his expectations.
“I thought more people would want to be buried next to me in Sparta to be honest with you—to that part I was a little disappointed,” De Sena said. “But the demand has been incredible.”
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