The 2020-21 NBA season is kicking off today.
Back in September, we wrote about NBA Top Shot, a blockchain platform that sells NBA-licensed digital collectibles of basketball highlights.
Founded by Dapper Labs — the team behind the viral CryptoKitties craze — NBA Top Shot is currently sitting at the intersection of 2 extremely hot trends: crypto assets and sports cards.
In anticipation of the new NBA season, we caught up with Dapper’s CEO Roham Gharegozlou to get an update on the platform:
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$5m+ has been spent on NBA Top Shot, making it the world’s biggest sports blockchain product. Of the revenue, ~65% is direct sales of highlight packs (95k+ packs sold) and ~35% is marketplace volume from secondary market trading.
Gharegozlou expects the secondary market to become a larger part of the business down the line as each highlight is traded a number of times.
The best-performing highlights on NBA Top Shot’s secondary platform have been from a random dude named Lebron. The Lakers forward (and recent NBA Finals MVP) is the subject of 8 of the 10 most valuable highlights, including the most valuable one — here he is eviscerating a Kings player, currently trades at $7300.
Other players that have commanded high marketplace volume (money spent buying and selling highlights include: Luka Doncic, Anthony Davis, Zion Williamson and Jimmy Butler)
The platform is targeting digitally savvy collectors and has seen adoption across all age groups. Further, a community is growing around the product with a dedicated Discord channel (4.5k+ members).
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We asked if it would be possible to purchase non-game highlights (since the NBA is infinitely amusing).
While NBA Top Shot does have editorial discretion over highlight selection, the criteria for inclusion is for “highest quality athletic plays.”
If that ever changes, I’d pay $100k for whatever it is that JR Smith is doing here:
