There’s a pretty fair argument to be made that the National Basketball Association played a vital role in helping move NFTs from the crypto world into the mainstream.
The nonfungible tokens are everywhere now, as celebrities from rapper Ice Cube to artist Jeff Koons get in on the trend while brands from Coca-Cola to Louis Vuitton dive into the metaverse.
See also: PYMNTS Metaverse Series: The Brands Are There. Will Eyeballs Follow?
But the NBA Top Shots NFT line, launched in late 2020, was the first to break into the mainstream in a big way, as the highlight video tokens attracted fans who’d never even dabbled in crypto — helped along by league promotions like announcers hollering “that’s gonna be a Top Shot” after a particularly spectacular slam dunk.
So it’s worth noting that the NBA is expanding beyond its Top Shots Partnership with sports-focused NFT developer Dapper Labs to create NBAxNFT, which at the moment is a playoff themed promotion with a Twitter account and Discord server — crypto’s social media discussion channel of choice — as well as a passel of new trademark applications under The Association banner. The latter covers everything from NFT tickets to collectables to virtual jerseys.
“We’re showcasing all things intersecting basketball and web3, including NFTs, gaming, and the metaverse,” the league tweeted.
While Top Shots are no longer the hottest of the hot NFT lines, they’re still a bestseller and a top 10 line according to DappRadar, which recorded more than 16 million sales and resales of Top Shots NFTS, which generated $885 million — much of it not for the NBA — at an average price of $55.
The NBA laid the foundation for much of the current activity by sports leagues from Major League Baseball to Soccer’s Premier League.
Read more: Home Run or Foul Ball? NFT Picture of Mickey Mantle’s Rookie Card Fetches $470K
Dunking on the Metaverse
And of course, the basketball league is getting itself at least prepped to jump into the metaverse, acquiring a pair of domain names — NBA.eth and theassociationnft.eth on the Ethereum Name Service. That’s a top-level domain heavily involved with Web3, the red-hot-but-questionable-for-now next generation of the internet that proponents say will be a decentralized version of today’s web where personal data will be controlled by people freed from the tyranny of big tech. Or so the theory goes.