Blockchain technology may soon become an integral part of the world’s largest basketball league.
According to a report by Sportico yesterday, some of the richest and most powerful team owners in the American Basketball League (NBA) formed a committee to investigate the use of blockchain in the NBA.
The members known as the Blockchain Advisory Subcommittee include Mark Cuban, Cai Chongxin, Ted Leonsis, Steve Pagliuca, Vivek Ranadive and Ryan Sweeney. According to Sportico, the goal of the subcommittee is to “explore ways to integrate blockchain into the alliance’s business.”
Two obvious possible use cases include ticketing and collectibles. Blockchain-based ticketing has made significant progress and now has an active user base, especially Mark Cuban has publicly stated that he supports the use of blockchain, which allows his team to profit from second-hand sales and resale .
Similarly, blockchain-based collectibles have also found an exceptionally comfortable product market, which fits well with the highlights of the NBA and fans obsessed with statistics. The sales of Flow Blockchain’s NBA Topshot tradable highlight project has exceeded 2.5 billion US dollars. In addition, Sportico also listed a number of NBA players as investors.
However, Cuban said in a statement from Sportico that the committee was not established to respond to the explosive popularity of NBA Topshot, but to focus on the wider application of blockchain technology.
Now, Cuban is a familiar name for members of the cryptocurrency community. Despite the past history of degrading digital currencies, he has now accepted them-especially the native protocols and tools of Ethereum, such as NFTs. After half-heartedly publishing the NFT works, the detective on the chain found his address and found that the billionaire possessed many DeFi protocol tokens.
In addition, according to a recent tweet, his decision to accept Dogecoin as tickets and merchandise for the Lone Ranger team seems to be a success:
The Lone Ranger has completed more than 20,000 Dogecoin transactions, which makes us the largest Dogecoin merchant in the world! We are grateful to everyone and can only say that if we sell another 65.56 billion Dogecoin worth of Lone Ranger goods, Dogecoin will definitely reach $1!
-Mark Cuban (MCuBan) March 6, 2021
Fans may also recognize Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive. After buying the team in 2013, he proposed some radical technology-centric ideas, including 4 defenses and 5 and built an app for fans to vote for the next game. When it comes to blockchain, he was also the first owner to accept the use of cryptocurrency to pay for tickets and set up a mining facility in the Kings Arena.
Author/ Translator: Jamie Kim
Bio: Jamie Kim is a technology journalist. Raised in Hong Kong and always vocal at heart. She aims to share her expertise with the readers at blockreview.net. Kim is a Bitcoin maximalist who believes with unwavering conviction that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency – in fact, currency – worth caring about.