Reports said that LeBron James’ record-breaking performance has led to a nonfungible token (NFT) boom on NBA-related collectibles.
It has been reported that NBA Top Shot reported over 2,500 individual NFTs traded, breaking a personal record for the player since May 2022. LeBron James became the NBA’s all-time charts with 38,388th points on February 8th. Thanks to his outstanding performance, the star’s NFT collectibles skyrocketed in popularity too.
However, the surge began last Sunday and LeBron James’ NFTs surpassed $652K in sales trading volume over the past 7 days. In order to celebrate the 2023 NBA season, the popular marketplace NBA Top Shot launched 25,000 brand-new NFT packs on February 8th.
The report said that each card pack buyer will receive an exclusive airdrop starting February 23rd too. The luckiest minters might get one of the 99 Legendary Record-Breaking Moments. This unique NFT is currently up for auction; at the time of writing, the highest bid is 6.3117 ETH.
Likewise, collectors are definitely more into NBA-related NFTs right now, with NBA Top Shot being a top marketplace. The dedicated platform was founded in 2020, just before the NFT boom in 2021. Its dedicated collectibles have amassed over $1.05 billion in sales in total and the numbers keep rising.
While NBA Top Shot is undoubtedly growing at lightspeed, sports NFTs are a powerful niche in general. The most popular types of NFTs in this category are NFT trading cards which you can mostly find via NFL All-Day, Sorare, and UFC Strike. This new way of collecting themed memorabilia attracted investors, collectors, and even NFT newbies to the market.
The latest example comes from Sorare, which started 2023 by partnering with Premier League. Accordingly, the digital platform (which boasts over 3 million users) will drop an NFT fantasy football game. Sorare’s impressive partner list also includes Bundesliga and Primera Divison to name a few.
Thus, the sports NFT market amassed a whopping $2.6 billion in 2022. This is almost double compared to the previous year.
Source: NFT Evening