Warriors Are First Pro Team to Launch NFT Collection

The NFT craze is heading to NBA teams. The Golden State Warriors launched a nonfungible token collection on the OpenSea platform Tuesday morning, becoming the first professional sports team to do so.

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“This is the wave of the future,” Warriors president Brandon Schneider said. “So we’ve been studying what the best way for us to get involved and create something for our fans is.

“NFTs have been around for years, but they’ve really become more mainstream and popular this year. The inflection point for us was really just watching NBA Top Shot start to explode.”

Yahoo Finance's @ReggieWade sat down with @warriors COO Brandon Schneider to get more on the NFT move:

"Being where we are in the Bay Area … we created a task force internally and started talking about how we [could] use this new cool technology"https://t.co/O8axDt6PxX

— Zack Guzmán (@zGuz) April 27, 2021

The team created digital championship rings to commemorate each of the team’s six NBA titles as well as digital ticket stubs from some of their most iconic games, like their victory over the Memphis Grizzlies on April 13, 2016, which broke the NBA single-season record for wins.

“This has been a tough year,” Schneider said, referencing the COVID-19 pandemic. “We usually do a poker tournament with all of our players that benefits the foundation. But we couldn’t do it this year. So we’re hoping this helps fill the gap because we want to be able to donate what we typically do.”

The NFT bubble will eventually burst, but for now, it’s here to stay.

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