The exchange is entering into a series of partnerships with American basketball professionals. Coinbase is adopting a sports marketing strategy similar to that of its competitor FTX, to expose its brand to millions of basketball enthusiasts.
Coinbase and the NBA
On October 19, 2021, Coinbase announced in a press release that it had entered into partnerships with major US basketball players. Coinbase becomes the crypto partner of the National basketball association (NBA), the Women’s national basketball association (WNBA), NBA affiliated leagues (NBA G League and NBA 2k League), and USA Basketball.
The Coinbase brand will be visible on the screens of millions of viewers at nationally televised games. On average, 1.6 million people watched NBA regular season games on major networks during the 2019-2020 season, according to Statista data.
Coinbase said in the release, that the exchange will create as part of the collaboration, “unique content, innovations, activations and experiences” to educate basketball fans on cryptocurrency developments.
Coinbase will additionally sponsor the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup, USA Basketball men’s and women’s national team exhibition tours and NBA G League Ignite.
Crypto exchanges and sports marketing: historic partnerships
Coinbase is thus following in the footsteps of FTX, which has forged partnerships with several leading sports entities. April 2021, FTX acquires naming rights to the Miami Heat stadium, renamed FTX Arena. June 2021, the exchange becomes the official sponsor of Major League Baseball.
Partnerships between crypto companies and sports players to create exclusive non-fungible tokens (NFTs), are also increasing in the cryptosphere. May 2021, Crypto.com becomes the partner of the Lega Serie A to immortalize via NFTs the highlights of the Coppa Italia final and the championship trophy.
As for the NBA, it is already well present on the field of NFTs with the NBA Top Shot supported by Dapper Labs and its blockchain Flow.
Is Coinbase planning to exploit these partnerships to create another collection of basketball-related NFTs? This hypothesis is not to be excluded after the exchange announced on October 12, 2021, the upcoming launch of its own NFT platform.
