The NBA and NBPA are launching The Association NFT, a new non-fungible token (NFT) concept in which the collectible’s design will be dynamic and vary over time.
The appearance of the NFTs will change based on the performance of the players on the court. The more accomplished a player becomes throughout the season, the more visually their NFT will change.
On Friday, 18,000 NFTs of the 2022 NBA Playoffs participants will be minted, 75 for each of the 240 rostered players. Almost 2,000 of those NFTs will be distributed to Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot NFT owners who are among the top collectors of each NBA team on Top Shot.
Won’t cost much!
Notably, NBA fans will not have to pay much for The Association’s NFTs. According to its website, the NFTs will be free to mint, but collectors will have to pay the cost of gas on Ethereum.
Having said that, the NBA is reserving some assets for holders of NBA Top Shot NFTs and limiting everyone to one per wallet.
The NFT art will be revealed on Friday once the presale minting begins and will be visible on NFT marketplaces.
While the overall NFT industry is declining, interest in sports NFTs has remained strong. Swoops, the Gary Vaynerchuk-backed NFT basketball game, secured a $3.5 million investment round last week to help develop its Polygon fantasy sports product.
Trend follows in MLB
Candy is making a foray into the brisk NFT market with a collectibles partnership with MLB. The dynamic content is more concerned with statistics than with aesthetic changes, but these innovations point to a potential utility-enhancing shift in the sports NFT business.
In other sports-related NFT headlines, Recur created a collegiate NFT marketplace, Amazon invested in fractional sports collectibles, and SportsIcon introduced documentary-style NFTs.
WNBA also set to offer NFTs
The New York Liberty stated that they will be the first WNBA team to issue non-fungible tokens in the form of digital art.
When they are issued, there will be 400 NFTs with similar designs, but each with its own unique serial number. The Liberty intends to do more of them this season.
“NFTs are the future of one-of-a-kind collectibles, and this exclusive drop celebrates the intersection of nail art culture and sports through the lens of the New York Liberty. A lot of our players get their nails done,” Clarke said. “We saw Betnijah (Laney) had her nails done in New York Liberty colors.”
Fans can obtain one of the NFTs by pre-ordering a ticket to the first game via a dedicated webpage.
Liberty’s in-house marketing team produced the design, which is based on the nail art teased in the franchise’s schedule announcement.
