In February 2021, a six-second video of LeBron James dunking, with a unique serial number, sold for $387,600. That same month, NBA-licensed digital trading cards sold for $224 million, and the platform’s valuation soared to $7 billion.
Four and a half years later, monthly sales had fallen below $2 million. There were fewer than 10,000 active holders, and they still haven’t bounced back.
Just this month, Adam Silver told the cameras in Macau that China has hundreds of millions of NBA fans and that basketball is China’s number-one sport. He’s probably right. The two preseason games in Macau—where the Rockets beat the Mavericks 135–117—were played in a packed arena, and the atmosphere was electric.
But I want to talk about something else. The league’s best-selling product isn’t the game at all. The ball is just raw material.
A lot of people think that batch of digital trading cards collapsed because of the crypto bear market. The rot was already at home; the bear market just lifted the lid. The hole was on the supply side: ordinary cards were printed in editions of 10,000 to 100,000, and the same player would get another run in a different series the next season. The previous batch’s sense of scarcity was instantly wiped out, while its price was still pegged to what people paid on launch day. The so-called limited edition was limited only at the issuer’s discretion. That’s not scarcity. That’s inventory.
Inventory can keep growing. Once buyers saw that, they stopped being willing to bid prices up. The platform actually faced a class-action lawsuit over this and settled in 2024, paying $4 million.
Fan tokens tell the same story. The top ten club tokens by market cap have fallen 92% to 99% from their peaks. Barcelona’s dropped from $72.55 to $0.47—a 99.3% plunge, worse than most altcoins over the same period. And the reason had nothing to do with market conditions. They sold you voting rights. The coach still picks the starting lineup. So much for that.
The way I see it, when sports IP goes on-chain, what’s being sold has always been that officially certified serial number, not the game itself. The certifier’s pen has never been written into the contract. The blockchain can prove which number your card is; it can’t prove that number 100,000 won’t show up tomorrow.
Go check your wallet. How many of those co-branded cards and club tokens you bought a couple of years ago are still there? What probably got you to hit confirm back then was those two words: “officially licensed.” But official status depends on people, and people can change their minds. The contract can’t—but if it says the issuer can print more at any time, then the contract is just a receipt.
There’s one detail I’ve never been able to figure out. What exactly does Silver mean when he says basketball is the number-one sport? Is that based on participation or broadcast revenue? The league hasn’t even given a definition. Supposedly, the domestic basketball participation statistics count every school PE class. Anyway, the methodology for these stats has always been loose. I couldn’t find the original spreadsheet, so there’s no clear answer on exactly how this figure was calculated. And no one’s really checked.
The ball is real. Those fans shouted themselves hoarse over those two nights. The serial numbers are printed. How many get printed depends on how many the printer wants to sell that day.
$CHZ $FLOW $BTC
#NBA #球迷代币 #NFT
Four and a half years later, monthly sales had fallen below $2 million. There were fewer than 10,000 active holders, and they still haven’t bounced back.
Just this month, Adam Silver told the cameras in Macau that China has hundreds of millions of NBA fans and that basketball is China’s number-one sport. He’s probably right. The two preseason games in Macau—where the Rockets beat the Mavericks 135–117—were played in a packed arena, and the atmosphere was electric.
But I want to talk about something else. The league’s best-selling product isn’t the game at all. The ball is just raw material.
A lot of people think that batch of digital trading cards collapsed because of the crypto bear market. The rot was already at home; the bear market just lifted the lid. The hole was on the supply side: ordinary cards were printed in editions of 10,000 to 100,000, and the same player would get another run in a different series the next season. The previous batch’s sense of scarcity was instantly wiped out, while its price was still pegged to what people paid on launch day. The so-called limited edition was limited only at the issuer’s discretion. That’s not scarcity. That’s inventory.
Inventory can keep growing. Once buyers saw that, they stopped being willing to bid prices up. The platform actually faced a class-action lawsuit over this and settled in 2024, paying $4 million.
Fan tokens tell the same story. The top ten club tokens by market cap have fallen 92% to 99% from their peaks. Barcelona’s dropped from $72.55 to $0.47—a 99.3% plunge, worse than most altcoins over the same period. And the reason had nothing to do with market conditions. They sold you voting rights. The coach still picks the starting lineup. So much for that.
The way I see it, when sports IP goes on-chain, what’s being sold has always been that officially certified serial number, not the game itself. The certifier’s pen has never been written into the contract. The blockchain can prove which number your card is; it can’t prove that number 100,000 won’t show up tomorrow.
Go check your wallet. How many of those co-branded cards and club tokens you bought a couple of years ago are still there? What probably got you to hit confirm back then was those two words: “officially licensed.” But official status depends on people, and people can change their minds. The contract can’t—but if it says the issuer can print more at any time, then the contract is just a receipt.
There’s one detail I’ve never been able to figure out. What exactly does Silver mean when he says basketball is the number-one sport? Is that based on participation or broadcast revenue? The league hasn’t even given a definition. Supposedly, the domestic basketball participation statistics count every school PE class. Anyway, the methodology for these stats has always been loose. I couldn’t find the original spreadsheet, so there’s no clear answer on exactly how this figure was calculated. And no one’s really checked.
The ball is real. Those fans shouted themselves hoarse over those two nights. The serial numbers are printed. How many get printed depends on how many the printer wants to sell that day.
$CHZ $FLOW $BTC
#NBA #球迷代币 #NFT