Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot will add new features to its NBA Summer League edition non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Fans attending the games in-person will be able to pre-order NFT moments of plays they saw live.
The Summer League is a pre-season competition following the NBA athletes’ draft, where team lineups are usually made up of mostly rookies and second year players. However, rookie moments will not be on sale. There are currently three editions to the league: California, Las Vegas, and Utah. Dapper Labs will have a kiosk at the Las Vegas location from August 8 to 10.
The Moments will be available for purchase for $5 at the kiosk and NFTs will be minted based on the number of purchases. These NFTs will belong to the new scarcity level Fandom tier, which lies between common and rare. The actual scarcity depends on the number of purchases on game day.
NBA Top Shot sales peaked at $224 million in February this year, with the number of buyers topping 184,000 in March. Since then, there’s been a steep decline, with July sales only one tenth of the most profitable month at $22 million and just over 60,000 buyers, according to CryptoSlam. Currently, total NFT sales across all platforms are at an all-time high, following a surge in the last few days. NBA Top Shot ranks 13th in sales across all platforms in the last seven days.
One of the criticisms of NBA Top Shot is that it is more of a product for crypto fans than for basketball fans. This latest initiative is heavily targeting basketball fans, which may address that head-on.
At the venues, Dapper Labs will offer an exclusive hospitality experience to some collectors. The selection criteria include collectors having participated in various challenges in Top Shot during the previous season. Challenges involve the trading of specific collectibles.
The NFT company recently raised $305 million at a $2.6 billion valuation and has plans to raise further funds at a $7.5 billion valuation.
