NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs has acquired around $305 million in new funding round from various investors. Based on a report by Business Insider on March 30, past and present NBA stars like Kevin Durant, Alex Caruso, and Michael Jordan participated in this funding round.
Other investors included Will Smith’s venture capital outfit Dreamers VC and The Chernin Group. Dapper Labs now allegedly now holds a $2.6 billion valuation after the latest funding round.
According to previous reports, NBA Top Shot grossed $230 million in sales as of the end of February 2021. A Dapper Labs spokesperson quoted by Business Insider said that the March trading figures have seen NBA Top Shot’s total gross surpass $483 million with over 802,000 users on the platform.
Notably, the NBA Top Shot boom is a part of the current interest that is directed towards the non fungible tokens (NFTs). Earlier in March, one NFT collector allegedly turned down a $1 million offer for an NBA Top Shot NFT that he originally acquired for $100,000 back in January.
Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, while commenting on the platform’s success, said:
“NBA Top Shot is successful because it taps into basketball fandom — it’s a new and more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players.”
Gharegozlou says Dapper Labs wants to extend the ‘same magic’ to the other sports franchises after the success of NBA Top Shot. In February 2021, Dapper Labs signed a deal with mixed martial arts promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Dapper Labs also developed CryptoKitties which was among the first NFT projects that gained mass attraction in the crypto world. In the height of the CryptoKitties craze, the digital cats breeding game became the biggest Ethereum-based decentralized application (dapp).
In the meantime, NFTs are somehow becoming more mainstream with the Saturday Night Live program recently presenting a rap sketch explaining the new digital collectible phenomena in their normally satirical tone.
