NFT Community Spotlight: The Bear Tiger Club

Bear Tiger Club NFT: The Country Club, Reimagined in Web3

Golf is a sport that is synonymous with community. Most often members will join a country club to meet new people, attend social events, and undoubtedly miss the occasional 4ft putt. This sense of belonging created by a country club is akin to the experience of being in an NFT community.

Welcome to The Bear Tiger Club, where the blockchain and golf collide! The Bear Tiger Club (TBTC) is the first fully functional blockchain-hosted country club! Simply put(t), TBTC aims to build the largest golf community on the planet — breaking down geographical barriers so golf lovers around the world can come together! The club is pioneering the golf verse: a fully immersive and first-of-its-kind ‘Virtual Reality’ golf experience where owning one of their NFTs acts as your membership card.

The Team

A community like TBTC is not possible without a team of good golfers and great people. The five founders of TBTC family are all united by their love for golf and their collective vision for the future of golf and blockchain technology.

Zane Scotland (@ZaneScotland) — From hosting The Bear Tiger Pod to being the face of the online brand, Zane is the figurehead of TBTC, and rightfully so! Zane is an English Professional Golfer and has 10 global professional wins to show for it. After his professional career, he transitioned to coaching, and is renowned as one of the best in the world. He is an ambassador for the R&A, the group that organizes The Open, while also commenting for Sky Sports Golf (and even the UK Discovery Channel!). Safe to say he knows his way around the course.

The remainder of the founding team (James Slate @_JSNFT, Wayne Barry, James Lloyd Townshend, and Nigel O’Donoghue) have a wealth of business experience, specifically within Private Equity and Finance. All four of them share the passion for golf that brought them together to form TBTC.

The Golfverse: A Metaverse for Golf Fans

The Golfverse will be the premier offering of TBTC — a fully immersive, first-of-its-kind virtual reality golf experience initially accessible in the metaverse on platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland. Within the Golfverse, members will have access to 4,000 virtual country clubs with competitions and single/multiplayer game modes. Members will be able to compete in live-action games and challenges using their own Bear Tiger Club NFTs.

So far there has been a tremendous amount of excitement generated in the Discord and Twitter around the Golfverse, one member of the community told me, “It’s such an exciting idea for games and socializing. Play golf online with friends, then drive the cart back to the clubhouse and shoot the breeze for a bit.”

The Bear Tiger Club has been exploring ways to revolutionize and reimagine the traditional country club experience. The team is dedicating lots of time before launch to work out the best ways to enhance member experience by exploring integrations into existing metaverse platforms and play-to-earn (P2E) components. Word is that the full Golfverse experience will launch early — mid 2023, with integrations and utility deploying through the end of the year.

Stay connected with the Bear Tiger Club NFT Community on Mobile

In addition to The Golfverse, the team is also building an app for members to access a wide range of golf related content and discussions — a safe place for golf lovers to hangout and meet new people. Bear Tiger Club holders will have access to one-on-one training with any of the in-app coaches — no more excuses for an inconsistent short game!

Duddy highlighted that “golf-related content is the best part of the community” reinforcing the community’s central mission to create a one-stop shop for golf-centric media to live. There is an increasingly expanding content team dedicated to creating high-quality and cutting-edge content to appeal to all levels of golfers.

They are hard at work crafting podcast episodes, on-course vlogs and much more to be released! To stay updated with their content check out the club’s Podcast and Youtube Channels!

NFT Utility & Member Events

In addition to all of its digital offerings, TBTC will also hold a series of in-person events for members to show off their skills and take some real girthy divots. Some perks they’ve teased include access to some of the world’s top country clubs, Pro-Amateur event entrance, tickets to PGA Tour events, and spots in Bear Tiger Club tournaments and events.

Further, members will have early access to new equipment through the club’s partners, as well as collectible items and world-class Bear Tiger Club apparel. Truly bringing their virtual country club to life.

Democratizing Golf through NFTs

The Bear Tiger community believes at its core that golf should be accessible to all — the space should reflect that with inclusivity and support golf lovers at each level of expertise. The team has identified and is working to change the fact that golf is enjoyed by a specific demographic, “84% of golf is still watched and played by white males ages 40+ — the sport is not touching nearly enough of the global community” says founder James Slate.

James and the team are dedicating their actions toward democratizing golf and making it an activity people of all ages and walks of life can enjoy and reap the benefits of. By first creating an online place for golf enthusiasts to gather, TBTC has taken the first step in allowing individuals from all over the world with a wide range of backgrounds to be introduced to the great sport of golf.

NFT Membership

There are three different membership tiers: Goats, Bears, and Tigers.

Goats: Founding members and initial investors who are paving the way for successful planning and execution of the Bear Tiger Club. These members bring a myriad of skills and experiences to the table: industry influence, credibility, business acumen, and the economic resources necessary for success. Goats will be seen as the influencers of the brand tasked with growing the community and increasing its visibility and utility. Each Goat NFT is fully customizable by the holder and guarantees a fully customizable plot of virtual land to develop and build their own golf course.

Bears + Tigers: These positions come equipped with very similar levels of utility and will be predominantly made up of committee members. They will be entrusted with expanding the community and enjoying the ‘cart path’ full of utility the Goats have paved the way for.

The Goats will be the first roles and tokens to be distributed, followed by 5,972 Bears that will be distributed through a combination of whitelist contests, giveaways, community partnerships, and a public sale. The same amount of Tigers will be released last with some reserved for Goat and Bear holders and the rest being publicly available.

Bear Tiger Club Art

All of the art for TBTC will be created by the talented NFT artist Dario De Siena. Each NFT will be created with technical blasts of color and will have a variety of golf-specific traits on the likes of a branded polo or hat. If the Bears and Tigers look half as swagged out as the GOATs that have minted already, the golf world is in for a treat. My 2023 bold prediction is that we see a lot of Bear Tiger Club PFPs floating around Twitter and the metaverse!

Takeaways

My biggest takeaway is that The Bear Tiger Club is a revolutionary community for the golf scene and the team is hard at work to make this the premier golf club in Web3. I am excited to see how the Golfverse develops and expands the global reach of golf. I’m looking forward to being able to take some swings with some fellow Bears and Tigers within the Golfverse in the near future! For more information on TBTC, they can be found on Twitter.

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