Major brands and institutions are ditching JPEG hype for real-world rights, sparking liquidity shifts and redefining the NFT market
NFT markets — once defined by pixel art and speculative flippers — are undergoing a tectonic transformation. What began as a cultural boom in 2021 has fractured along a stark divide: on one side, dormant collectible markets with fading floor prices; on the other, a burgeoning class of utility-driven tokens that embed rights, revenue streams, and real-world access.
This pivot is not anecdotal. Institutional entrants from banking and entertainment to sports franchises are moving into utility NFTs, crafting programmable assets tied to financial products, event access, and consumer loyalty. Traditional JPEG projects now compete with tokens granting real-world privileges, and liquidity is following the utility.
Regulatory winds and shifting investor appetites have hastened the decline of art-only NFTs. Firms that rode the first wave are either reinventing their products or shelving them entirely. What’s emerging is a market less about owning a cartoon and more about owning a stake in an experience, revenue stream, or digital-physical service.
How Utility Is Replacing Speculation
Earlier this month, a consortium of European football clubs — including giants like Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan — announced an NFT platform that tokenizes season tickets, VIP experiences, and player merchandise directly on chain. Unlike previous fan tokens, these NFTs grant verifiable access rights and revenue participation for holders.
“Fans aren’t buying JPEGs anymore. They’re buying gate keys, fractional ownership, and utility,” said an executive at a tier-one European sports agency involved in the project. Early secondary market data shows these utility NFTs trading with tighter spreads and higher turnover than traditional profile-picture collections.
Meanwhile, entertainment companies are embedding rights and revenue shares into NFTs. A Hollywood studio recently tokenized backend royalties on a major franchise’s soundtrack, allowing token holders a cut of streaming revenue. Institutional interest isn’t hypothetical: hedge funds and family offices have begun allocating capital to these asset streams, treating them like digital revenue bonds.
The Infrastructure Behind Utility Markets
Blockchain developers are swiftly expanding tooling to support these new assets. Interoperability frameworks now allow utility NFTs to interact with DeFi platforms for staking, lending, or yield generation — capabilities absent in earlier collectible tokens.
Several Layer-2 networks, including Polygon and Optimism, have rolled out “access control” and “credential” NFT standards that embed real-world permissions — from ticket entry to gated community rights — into cryptographically enforceable smart contracts. Exchanges are listing these tokens with bespoke market-making engines built for low-latency rights transfer.
Liquidity providers are incentivized: an NFT tied to a revenue stream or future service can be valued with cash-flow models. That shift enables traditional finance firms to underwrite and trade utility NFTs similar to fixed income, a structural departure from speculative JPEGs.
Where Regulatory Pressure Is Building
With utility NFTs increasingly entwined with financial claims, regulators are paying attention. In the U.S., the SEC has signaled that tokens promising revenue shares or economic participation may fall under securities law — a stance that could reshape product design. European regulators are also debating whether utility NFTs that offer financial rights require licensing under MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets).
Executives in the space describe “constructive tension”: compliance costs are rising, but institutional onboarding accelerates as legal clarity improves. “Brands want to play in this space, but they want legal cover,” a compliance lead at a major global bank told MetroScroll. “That’s driving a bifurcation: compliant utility NFTs vs. exempt entertainment tokens.”
What’s Happening to Legacy Collectibles
Once-high-profile collections that lack utility are languishing. Floor prices on many art-centric projects have cratered as trading volume evaporates. Some founders are retrofitting utility — embedding access rights or revenue splits — but the market’s response has been mixed.
Collectors who entered for speculative upside are now asking hard questions: what does this asset do? Projects that can answer with functional utility find renewed interest; those that cannot are relegated to illiquid corners of secondary markets.
