The Sacramento Kings can now claim that they are the very first professional sports team in the US that created a crypto token in order to reward their fans. According to Ryan Montoya, Kings CTO:
“Fans can get those points and put them in their wallets and experience it all on the blockchain platform.”
As you can easily guess, the token will be called Kings Token. It will pair with a gaming platform that the team created as they were waiting for sports betting to be legalized in California. This happened in May 2018 as the federal restriction was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
This Kings Token was developed through a joint effort with Blockparty, an event ticketing platform based on blockchain technology.
Blockparty CDO, Vladislav Ginzburg:
“In our opinion, the blockchain has a role in the entire event experience, whether it’s a sports game, music festival or Broadway show.”
Blockparty is also creating a case study around the Kings Token so that other NBA teams can see results and be tempted to do the same thing. This would be really useful but only if the project is successful.
Sacramento Kings – Tech Development Pioneers
The Kings Token is just the latest in numerous technological endeavors that the NBA team was involved in. For instance, in 2014, Sacramento Kings became the very first team in the NBA that accepted BTC as payment. In 2018 we saw the Kings as the very first professional sports team that actually mines cryptocurrency. This was done through a program called MiningForGood. Obtained funds are donated to charity.
The Kings Token will be used in the Golden 1 Center app, which is tracking the fans’ accumulated points and engagement. As a fan, you can ward rewards and then redeem points for signed merchandise, courtside tickets, unique events access and much more.
The new Sacramento Kings token is based on Ethereum and uses ERC-20. However, initially, it will only be used with the Golden 1 Center arena of the team. Fans cannot trade this token and there won’t be a private key available. A QR code can be presented to redeem gained points and receive transaction confirmation. Kings Token is currently still being tested but it should launch on October 25.
Plans for the future include the possibility of transferring the tokens to friends and an opportunity to earn rewards when fans get to the game before the tip-off or when eating at specific restaurants. There are definitely more complex plans in place.
According to Ginzburg:
“Forty-one games of 20,000 people – I’m going to go ahead and say that many of those people don’t own any crypto whatsoever. Suddenly by downloading the Golden 1 Center app, they are going to have an ERC-20 wallet with an ERC-20 token.”
At the end of the day, this is the most important part of the story for cryptocurrency mass adoption. If we have a strong exposure to blockchain technology through a league like the NBA, it can do wonders for exposure.
