The hugely popular basketball highlight NFTs will be available to fans in-arena as they happen.
The NBA is teaming up with Dapper Labs to mint Top Shots NFTs for basketball fans to buy at the arenas they happen.
NBA Top Shots are short clips like slam dunks and player moves stored on non-fungible tokens. Called Moments, the brief highlight videos have proven hugely popular, helping NFTs break out of the crypto community into the mainstream basketball fan base.
The first of these Moments — which are essentially digital trading cards produced in limited amounts — will be available at three NBA Summer League games played in Las Vegas on Aug. 8, 9 and 10.
They will be sold for $5 each at a kiosk in the Thomas & Mack Center, and delivered to fans as soon as the next day.
The offering is the debut of Top Shots new Fandom Tier line of Moments, in which the number of NFTs minted will be driven by demand rather than a predetermined limit. That said, they are intended to fall between the Common and Rare tiers.
A minimum of 1,000 of the Moments will be minted at the upcoming Summer League games. They will not feature any NBA rookies, in order to preserve their NBA Top Shots debuts for the regular season.
By making the new Fandom Tier line available only at events, the idea is they will not only produce special Moments, they will give NFT fans another reason to see games live.
Special NFTs, Special Events
Along with those three Moments, the inaugural Fandom Tier line will include one distributed as a Challenge Award and another as a Quest prize.
Beyond that, Dapper Labs is holding a sweepstakes in which eight Top Shots collectors will win a trip for two to the first three Summer League Games, including game tickets and early, guaranteed access to the first Fandom Tier Moments.
The announcement comes a day after the FTX cryptocurrency exchange announced it had teamed up with the top PR firm Dolphin Entertainment to create an NFT marketplace for major sports and entertainment brands, leveraging its connections in film, television, music, gaming, e-sports and lifestyle industries.
