NBA Top Shot makes cyber splash
Cuban says craze is ‘a real market’
Pull up YouTube and type the words “LeBron James Nemanja Bjelica” in the search bar. The page will load with clips – one titled “LeBron James Wanna Murder Nemanja Bjelica With Dunk Then Stare Down” – of James firing down the lane and dunking over Bjelica.
Watch it free of charge. Replay it as often as desired.
Last Monday an NBA Top Shot user named “jesse” paid $208,000 for that highlight.
Except in this case, highlight might be the wrong word. So what was purchased?
On Top Shot, the latest internet craze, such highlights are referred to as “moments.” And what “jesse” (aka Jesse Schwarz) actually purchased is the NBA’s intellectual property of that moment in the form of a digital collectible sold through blockchain technology that gave him one of the 49 minted LeBron James Cosmic (Series) 1 Dunks.
Top Shot has received a lot of attention after rapid marketplace growth over the last week. As of Wednesday, the site had more than 350,000 active users and 100,000 purchasing users. Top Shot did more than $37 million in sales over a 24-hour period Monday, according to Cryptoslam, and buyers have surpassed sellers (slightly) in the marketplace.
The NBA and Players Association are in a revenue-sharing agreement on each transaction with Dapper Labs, which built and maintains the marketplace. NBA players open packs of moments on livestreams. The rise of Top Shot has sparked debates over the definition of “ownership” and whether this method can provide a blueprint for the future of the collector’s market.
Welcome to the all-or-nothing stakes of NBA Top Shot.
How it works
The concept of digital ownership is the biggest hurdle to understanding Top Shot. Of course, believing in digital ownership means thinking an intangible item everyone and anyone can access at any time is capable of being owned and that ownership leads to value.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) exist on a blockchain, of which there are an infinite amount. No two NFTs are the same and cannot be divided or multiplied (unlike Bitcoin).
Each moment – a short video from multiple angles – on Top Shot is an NFT. This is how moments (aka highlights) are bought, sold and traded in the digital marketplace.
“NFTs in general, of which Top Shot is the first and a leader, could turn into a top 3 revenue source for the NBA over the next 10 years,” Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote to USA TODAY Sports in an email.
A different James dunk sold for $125,000 on Thursday, two days after a Ja Morant “Holo MMMXX” went for $100,000 – the same price somebody paid for a Zion Williamson block (also the most-expensive non-dunk sale).
Overnight, a Williamson rookie debut card, also a block, sold for $77,777. Vince Carter’s final career 3-pointer sold last Monday for $64,990 – an example that career milestones could carry heightened value.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Schwarz said on ESPN last week. “I think you can see as the users grow – and they do astronomical numbers every day – I think you can see, like, how good the product is and how addictive it is. It’s like day trading meets sports meets fantasy.”
A self-proclaimed “huge” James fan, Schwarz has been involved in the sneaker collecting game, and he sees Top Shot as another example of that hobby.
“To me, art is what you want it to be, so now it’s Top Shots,” he said.
Cuban owns about 50 moments and spent about $600 total. He entered the market when moments were going for $2 and $3, including one of Mavericks star point guard Luka Doncic.
Moments are minted and then released into the marketplace through pack drops. The base set (most common) sells for $9, while more exclusive packs for higher-tiered cards go for more.
Packs are currently sold out, but Top Shot has been organizing “pack drops” that double as site stress tests in which 5,000 users can purchase packs.
More than 90,000 people waited in the queue last Tuesday during a base set pack drop.
Once users make an account with Top Shot, they are eligible to purchase packs. If they strike out during a drop, they can hit the marketplace to purchase available moments – the current highest listing is $240,000, for a Morant dunk.
Top Shot’s recent popularity streak has affected the market.
“(It’s) near impossible to get a pack, and the lowest cost pricing for a card is escalating quickly as the available for sale supply is being overwhelmed by the demand,” Cuban wrote. “That will be the biggest challenge: maintaining the equilibrium of supporting the existing prices in their marketplace while keeping pricing low for new collectors and investors. They may have to do HUGE mints of new packs and see how the marketplace evolves.”
Between Wednesday and Thursday, Top Shot minted 317,000 moments.
Top Shot’s place in collector’s industry
The trading card industry, and memorabilia overall, made a comeback in recent years before exploding in 2020.
Top Shot launched a closed beta to an exclusive group of about 30 collectors in mid-May and grew the community to a few thousand before moving to an open beta on Oct. 1.
“We want to figure out a way to bring real value to sports fans,” Caty Tedman, Dapper’s head of partnerships who oversees Top Shot, told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s a really exciting opportunity for fans to take part in a basketball economy.”
Issues in the physical card industry, such as condition and authenticity, need not be accounted for on Top Shot thanks to the blockchain. Additionally, prospective buyers can see exactly how much a moment has previously sold for, who has owned it and all dates of its prior sales.
Daily fantasy users were early adopters of Top Shot, which has already developed a weekly fantasy game for moments, called Swyssh. Hypothetical matchups can be simulated thanks to the digital nature of the item.
“That’s part of what makes the moments on blockchain great, is all of that data is on chain, and someone can tap into it to build something that maybe we never even thought of,” Tedman said. “It wouldn’t be impossible to do that with a physical good, but it would be really, really hard.”
Top Shot has been developing a mobile game, Hardcourt, for the last 18 months that should be released in the near future, Tedman added.
Thinking forward
The league and players association began exploring and researching potential blockchain applications, including digital collectibles, about three years ago. In 2019, the NBA, NBPA and Dapper announced a multiyear licensing agreement. (None of the parties would disclose the financial terms.)
Dapper had developed product pitches for several sports, Tedman said, but viewed the NBA in high regard because of its reputation as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy organization.
“They kind of always were at the top of our list of dream partners,” Tedman said. “It just so happened that at the same time they were starting to explore blockchain deeply as well, so when we came to the table together and pitched this consumer product, they loved it and they helped us along the way to make it better, and better for their fans. Our pitch didn’t really did not waiver much from what you see today, which is particularly exciting.”
UFC also has a partnership with Dapper, and the company has spoken with basically every major sports league about how it would look for their fan base, Tedman said.
They’ll all be playing behind the NBA, which pounced on an opportunity to build a digital ecosystem while providing fans with even more ways to connect with the league and its players another revenue source.
Josh Hart of the Pelicans is an early adopter of Top Shot and has opened packs on livestreams and proclaimed that the concept exudes “swag.”
The Kings’ Tyrese Haliburton hyped the product and attempted to persuade teammates to join him on the platform.
“We were surprised to see (player involvement) this early, but not surprised to see it at all … especially the guys who are leaning in and understand how to build a collection and understand pruning that collection and understand the churn of putting stuff back into the marketplace so you can buy more packs. It’s been super exciting,” Tedman said.
“It’s super exciting that it’s so positive and we haven’t really gotten anybody saying, ‘I don’t get it,’ which really is a great sign.”
Players are invested: They keep 100% of the money from moments of theirs that they personally sell on the marketplace, Tedman said.
On the flip side, the buyer will have little trouble proving it was previously owned by that player.
“We are excited about this new and unique partnership with Dapper and look forward to a continued collaboration with them on the future growth of this product offering,” Josh Goodstadt, executive vice president of licensing for THINK450, which is the business arm of the NBPA, said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports.
Next up is the WNBA. Top Shot doesn’t have a launch date yet, but women’s moments will be available soon.
‘This is a real market’
Dapper has already seen what happens when a product like this fails.
In late 2017, Dapper launched a product called CryptoKitties. A CryptoKitty named “Dragon” sold for $170,000 after users initially flooded the market, which had essentially evaporated 18 months later.
“We learned that there needs to be scalability in a platform,” Tedman said.
Tedman added that Top Shot grew 10% week-over-week just working through the early days of the product before taking off.
“We need to be able to support that number of transactions if we want to reach our aspirations of being a global basketball product,” she said.
Technical challenges have presented themselves too. Last week, Top Shot began promoting a rare pack drop for noon ET Thursday. The drop was delayed for three hours before being pushed to last Friday.
Concerns of online bots hijacking the queue, thereby locking out customers, drove the decision.
“We want to be responsible about this drop knowing how many collectors are excited for this Premium Pack drop,” Top Shot tweeted.
Top Shot has faced complaints for not having a smoother process to withdraw money; until two weeks ago, Tedman said, one customer service employee handled all of the verification needed to take money out.
The concerns are valid. But the believers are confident products such as Top Shot are the future.
On Friday morning alone, a Steph Curry assist from the base set sold for $299 while a Bojan Bogdanović 3-pointer (Metllic Gold LE) went for $2,900.
“Make no mistake,” Cuban wrote. “This is a real market with real collectors and real value. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges, there certainly are, but (intellectual property to NFT) is here to stay.”
EA Sports has announced that it would develop a college football video game for the first time since “NCAA Football 14” eight years ago. But hardcore fans have already taken it upon themselves to add new life to the series.
For years, fans have made downloadable roster updates so people could play with players such as Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence. But the group called College Football Revamped has turned the game into a new experience with redesigned uniforms, fields, updated graphics and a College Football Playoff-like system.
And since EA Sports made its big reveal, the group is taking its job even more seriously to help satisfy fans’ cravings for the new game.
“We’re gonna serve as like an appetizer until we get that full game,” said Cole Winton, a 23-year-old computer science major at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and founder of College Football Revamped. “That’s why we started this whole project in the first place. That’s why we’ve been pouring so many hours into it. We love this franchise, and to see it being revived, it’s just awesome.”
When stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic were enacted in Florida in April, Winton and his brother discussed their love for “NCAA Football” – and also how dated it was. Winton researched how to make tweaks to the game and figured out how to edit jerseys, fields and textures. Thus, College Football Revamped was born.
The project includes updated school logos, uniforms, fields and stadiums for the Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and some Big Ten teams. The rest of the FBS teams will be updated in their next series of modifications, which usually takes three to four weeks to develop and review.
Instructions on how to download the content for the consoles that support the game – Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC – are on the College Football Revamped website, and people can join their Discord channel if they have any questions, issues or just want to talk about the game.
“Something that we’ve always said about the project is it’s built by the community for the community,” said Chad Walker, the project’s lead contributor, who is from Oregon. “I put so many hours into it, but I don’t even think about that at all. It’s so much fun.”
On New Year’s Day the team released its interface update, which improved menus, fonts and game presentation that matched ESPN’s current model.
Their release on Feb. 6 gave players the option to include a four- or eight-team playoff. They were shocked by the reception they’ve had; Walker said they went from 3,000-4,000 downloads to 25,000 after the interface update.
“That definitely is what put us on the map,” Winton said.
Winton and Walker said college football’s uniqueness combined with NCAA Football 14’s features are what made it stay relevant. Th e2014 game can be found online for over $100. “People just miss the college football game,” said Drew Morris, known as YouTuber “Not The Expert.” “It’s just nothing like it. There’s so much passion, tradition, and the game play itself is better.”
Morris is one of many YouTubers who created a series based on dynasties in the game. His series on the fictitious UGF Pandas gained over 6.6 million views over 85 videos.
Middle Tennessee State junior Stephen Rowell, who runs an Instagram account that was titled “bringncaaback,” was about to get ready for an online lecture when a follower told him about the news. He said he didn’t pay attention in his class as he celebrated with thousands of people messaging him about it.
“It honestly became a cultlike following, like people really wanted this game back,” Rowell said. His page is now called “broughtncaaback” and has over 27,000 followers.
There is no date for when the new version will be released, but people have begun to make their wish list of what they want the game to include, which Morris made a 31-minute video about. Morris and Rowell said that they do not want the game to be like the “Madden” franchise, which has gotten negative reviews from many users on sites such as metacritic. Customization and game play were mentioned as keys to the game’s success, but Morris said he is going to continue to pitch ideas to EA on his social platforms.
College Football Revamped said the return of the series was a huge win for the community and it would continue to update NCAA Football 14.
Rowell and Morris praised the work College Football Revamped has done for the franchise, with Morris even being offered a customized team to use in the game by the Revamped team. Winton said he hopes that project has excited other players.
In the end, it’s just a group of people putting work into a game they love.
“It’s a cool lesson in the power of a community,” Winton said. “When you have people who are passionate about the same thing and who have a common interest and put your minds together, you can get a great product out there.”