Source: Jordan Brand / NIke
Not too long ago Nike announced that they were going to do what they could to combat sneaker bots that eat merchandise on release days at an absurd rate.
Since then, sneaker bots have gone ham on the app and left everyday consumers out in the cold with bare feet. Now with the insanely anticipated release of the Air Jordan 1 “Chicago” colorway, Nike is using a new method to ensure actual people and not bots get a pair of the 2022 grails. Over the weekend Nike revealed that on Nov. 8, SNKR app users will be receiving “Exclusive Access” to the highly coveted Air Jordan 1s but only people who’ve entered at least 20 raffles for previous Air Jordan 1s AND lost will be chosen to get blessed with the access.
Needless to say, we’re still not getting our hopes up for this one.
Though exclusive access will be given out tomorrow (Nov. 8), the actual release date for the sneakers will be on Nov. 19 and as of now it will not be a raffle but a general release. In other words, sneaker bots will be having a field day as they did when the Air Jordan 4 “Midnight Navy” silhouettes dropped a few weeks back which had people “Pending” for damn near a half hour. Though the SNKRS app had roughly 50,000 available pairs on that release day, pictures began circulating online which showed that sneaker bots had eaten 25,000 of those pairs. Keep in mind, that release wasn’t anywhere near as hype as these Air Jordan 1s are.
As of now, word is there will be around 500,000 pairs of the Air Jordan 1 “Chicago’s” available, but some stores have already begun backdooring their pairs to secondary markets in order to profit off the hype.
Should be interesting to see how many people get exclusive access tomorrow (we got our fingers crossed over here), and how the SNKRS app will be acting come the actual release day in a few weeks.
Good luck, y’all. We gonna need it.
