Fiesta San Antonio Commission unveils non-fungible token for Friday’s Taste of Fiesta
Fiesta Medals have been a San Antonio staple for decades. Now, the Fiesta San Antonio Commission is taking that beloved bling into the future with Fiesta’s first-ever NFT or Non-Fungible Token, a special digital collectible.
Feast your eyes on the Taste of Fiesta 2022 NFT, a GIF-like Fiesta animation that’s like a pin-on on the screen instead of the shirt or sash.
The Fiesta San Antonio Commission has released its first ever NFT or Non-Fungible Token, a digital collectible that looks a lot like an animated Fiesta medal. NFT is for Taste of Fiesta, which runs Friday at Aggie Park.
ScreenshotThe limited edition NFT is free with a $35 or $50 ticket to Friday night’s Taste of Fiesta event at Aggie Park, or $20 on its own. Taste of Fiesta tickets and NFTs are available at sanantoniofiesta.org/nfts.
“With this NFT, the Fiesta Commission is excited to offer this new feature to our Fiesta family, and we look forward to creating more of these digital collectibles so that more people will have the opportunity to experience part of the Fiesta spirit,” the commission’s managing director Steve Rosenauer said in an emailed statement.
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Taste of Fiesta offers various Fiesta food and drinks ahead of Fiesta 2023, which runs from 20-30 April. And much like a Fiesta medal, the Taste of Fiesta NFT captures that fun in a small, collectible object—in this case, a cartoon mouth that opens wide for some chicken on a stick and other Fiesta favorites.
“It seems like a big part of Fiesta is the collectibles. And this seemed like a natural fit,” says Rik Wederstrandt, art director at Blonde Creative, the San Antonio advertising and design agency that created NFT.
An NFT is a unique digital resource, such as an image, video or music file. Each NFT has a unique digital signature that is authenticated on the “blockchain”, a kind of digital ledger that is stored on thousands of computers and cannot be copied or duplicated.
Fiesta NFT buyers “coin” or publish their NFTs via a special one-time code and link. The NFT is then stored in the cloud until the owner claims it and sticks it in a special digital wallet.
Wederstrandt understands the concept comes with a bit of a learning curve, which is why fiestasanantonio.org/nfts includes an FAQ section and walkthrough video. Although he noted that Fiesta is a good platform to educate the public about NFTs.
Fiesta isn’t the only NFT game in town. In March, the Spurs sold $200,000 worth of NFTs to celebrate Gregg Popovich’s coaching career and support the San Antonio Food Bank. Even tattoo artists in the Alamo City sell NFTs to supplement their skin-based income.
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Wederstrandt sees the new Fiesta NFT as the start of a new era in Fiesta collectibles, one that will complement but never replace traditional Fiesta medals. After all, the former Fiesta Chips King has more than 600 of these shiny beauties.
“It was kind of my baptism into the medal collection,” he said of his 2013 reign.
Time will tell if NFTs have as much of an impact on the Fiesta faithful.
