Dapper Labs, the company behind the popular NBA Top Shot fantasy basketball game NFT, has raised $250 million in additional funding. Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson have invested in Dapper Labs, the startup behind the NFT NBA Top Shot card trading platform. Earlier this year, many NBA players found themselves fans of Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot NFT collectable platform, which skyrocketed in popularity in February and March and has raised over $703 million to date (according to CryptoSlam).
Along with the NFT NBA Top Shot and Major League Baseball from Candy Digital and Topps, there’s also the launch of NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s Autograph and many more. More recently, a company called sigma announced that it is working with three NFL players to create NFT collections for each of them. According to the creators of the NFT, in the coming months, sports NFTs will be integrated into video games and enhanced with rare trading cards, making these items even more popular.
The UFC’s interest in NFTs is most likely due to the success of the NBA Top Shot NFT marketplace, which allows basketball fans to buy videos of the league’s best moments. NBA Top Shot has created a space where people interested in NFTs, collectables, and basketball can gather to trade bits of sports history. In the NBA Top Shot ‘Marketplace’, users can buy, trade, sell and display ‘Moments’, similar to traditional sports collectables and memorabilia. NBA Top Shot is part of the world of NFTs or non-fungible tokens, a new blockchain technology that allows people to buy and sell digital items by permanently registering a record of ownership.
NBA Top Shot allows users to buy, sell, and collect NBA NFTs that showcase powerful “moments” minted on the FLOW blockchain. NBA Top Shot offers a marketplace where fans can buy and sell selected clips of the best basketball games and NBA-licensed digital merchandise such as NFTs. It is one of the fastest growing online marketplaces for buying and selling non-fungible or NFT tokens. This game is a cryptographic collectable that consumers can purchase as a non-fungible token (NFT).
In the world of sports, while some fans buy NFTs to show their support for their favourite player or team, others hope that their purchases will generate more profits in the future. The growing participation of NBA players in cryptocurrencies and NFTs could have a similar impact. While most of them invest in these businesses rather than selling them as representatives, their public recognition and praise should go a long way in attracting even more investors who might not have entered the space otherwise. Such markets have attracted much attention from professional athletes, especially NBA players, who have been especially vocal about their interest and support on social media lately.
