Dallas Mavericks to Provide NFTs with Tickets Starting Next Season
Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur and majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has revealed plans to start issuing NFT-based tickets for upcoming basketball games. This will add value to the tickets, while also allowing them to be traded, sold, and overall commodified with ease. Cuban says these NFTs will start in the Maverick’s upcoming 2021-22 season.
What Exactly are NFTs?
To understand how important Mark Cuban’s plans are, we first need to explain what NFTs are, and how they differ from more traditional blockchain assets such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. An NFT is a non-fungible token, which means it is a unique asset that cannot be replaced or interchanged with another asset.
It helps to contrast this with fungible assets. We treat most money as fungible because money is meant to be interchangeable. For instance, $1 is meant to equal the same as any other $1, and 1 BTC can be swapped out for any other 1 BTC. They are meant to be indistinct from each other. For the purposes of this article, we should assume that practically all money is fungible.
Fungibility is good for currency, because currency is meant to be uniform. And non-fungibility is best for unique and rare items as it reinforces their individuality.
NFTs are designed to be unique, meaning they cannot be seamlessly swapped. This simple technology has expanded the blockchain industry into other areas. People have been using NFTs for a number of use-cases, including art, items in games, real estate, collectibles, and more.
NFTs have created an astonishing amount of hype within this year. In February, NFT trading volume had grown by 400% since 2019. However, since then, the market has been falling, and unfortunately in the last month, the market has downsized by 89%. Nevertheless, NFTs are still seeing real-world adoption, such as via Mark Cuban’s plans with the Dallas Mavericks.
How Do NFT Tickets for the Dallas Mavericks Work?
In an interview, Mark Cuban was asked about his thoughts on distributing NFT-based tickets, to which he said:
“The question isn’t will [we use NFT tickets], it’s when, and we’ll start doing it this coming season where we’ll issue an NFT after you’ve chosen your ticket on TicketMaster or whatever. So [you] have seat A3 in section 109. Now we already know that. We use the API. Bam, we’ll give [you] the NFT, and that comes with all the associated value that we create for it because there’s no limit to the value we can add to it”.
This means that at some point within in the year, Cuban will be providing customers with basketball tickets that have full NFT capabilities. This will add significant value to Dallas Mavericks tickets, because not only will a ticket grant you access to a game, but it could gain other uses later on, or be treated as a collectible item should that particular game become noteworthy or historically important.
The implementation of this is huge news for the blockchain industry, as it means that NFTs will spread to a wide variety of people who might not be involved in the crypto industry. It shows how NFTs can be useful outside of blockchain communities. It would also encourage ticket-owners to research NFTs and to set up a wallet so that they can store them. This is similar to how GameStop’s upcoming involvement with NFTs will help bring the tech to people outside of blockchain and crypto communities.
After this basketball season, expect to see Dallas Mavericks tickets up for sale on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea. It will also be fascinating to see if Mark Cuban will add features to these NFTs to make them more valuable as well– either at the start or later on, as value can be added at any time.
Do you think the Dallas Mavericks will help increase NFT adoption? Let us know in the comments!