NBA Top Shot Launches WNBA NFTs, With Plans to Expand
Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot platform, which helped spearhead the NFT market’s rapid expansion earlier this year, announced today it has added crypto collectibles based on the WNBA women’s basketball league.
The NFT set, which had previously been teased, comes in the form of a single common-rarity pack that will be available for purchase on Friday as part of the existing NBA Top Shot platform. The inaugural pack includes collectible “moments”—which are like digital trading cards built around real WNBA video highlights—of popular players such as Brittney Griner, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Sabrina Ionescu.
Caty Tedman, Head of Partnerships at Dapper Labs said:
“Our goal is really to have parity between the men’s game and the women’s game.”
Top Shot platform struggled to meet demand, resulting in downtime, marketplace limitations, and other hitches. Caty Tedman said that the team focused on strengthening the platform over the last few months, highlighting what fans like while addressing potential hurdles where users are dropping out.
Now Dapper is refocused on growth while also experimenting with engagement opportunities.
NBA Top Shot launched its first moments that fans could purchase exclusively at NBA Summer League games in Las Vegas. “It’s not scalable to have a half-dozen people with iPads executing that at every arena,” Tedman admitted. But she said that the team is looking into technology solutions to potentially deploy that feature in a larger way.
Top Shot’s largest period of trading volume came earlier this year, when it netted $432 million in activity in February and March combined, per data from CryptoSlam. The wider NFT market has surged over the last month, but Top Shot hasn’t been one of the bigger beneficiaries of that momentum: Its $27 million in trading volume this month pales in comparison to NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Art Blocks, both of which have done well over $300 million in business in August alone.
Top Shot helped create the wider momentum around NFTs earlier this year—so even if other projects are in the spotlight right now, Tedman said that it’s all good news for Dapper.
