NBA team the Sacramento Kings are set to become the first American professional sports team to establish a crypto-based rewards program for fans. The Kings token, a joint venture with blockchain-based event ticketing platform Blockparty, will integrate with a forthcoming predictive gaming platform that will reward fans in a number of ways, including signed merchandise, unique events, and courtside tickets, CoinDesk reports.
Tokens Fit for a King
The Kings token, which will run on the Ethereum platform, will sit within the team’s Golden 1 Center app and will track fan engagement, as well as accumulated points, offering rewards based on these values. Kings CTO Ryan Montoya told CoinDesk that “fans can get those points and put them in their wallets and experience it all on the blockchain platform.” Blockparty meanwhile is using the Kings token as a trial, with the hope that it will prove successful enough to be taken up by other teams, with blockchain being a central tenet rather than simply being used as a buzzword, according to Vladislav Ginzburg, Blockparty’s Chief Development Officer:
In our opinion, the blockchain has a role in the entire event experience, whether it’s a sports game, music festival or Broadway show.
Not the Kings’ First Bite at the Blockchain
The Kings token won’t represent the first time the team has dabbled with blockchain technology – in 2014 they began accepting BTC in the Golden 1 Center arena, with the advent of the new token representing another chapter of what Ginzburg called a “mass adoption story”. Should the trial, which is set to launch on October 25, prove successful, the scheme could eventually be expanded to include the ability for users to transfer tokens to others and earn rewards by eating at participating nearby restaurants. The NBA has recently has another brush with the blockchain, following the attempt by Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwidde to securitize his $34.4 million contract on the blockchain, an attempt that the NBA sadly denied him after they ruled he could not use his contract as a digital investment vehicle.
