NBA's Sacramento Kings to Reward Loyal Fans With Crypto Tokens

The NBA's Sacramento Kings are the first U.S. professional sports team to develop a crypto token for fan rewards.

Further, Montoya said the token, called Kings Token, will pair with a predictive gaming platform the team has developed in anticipation of the legalization of sports betting in California.

The Kings Token is a joint effort with blockchain-based event ticketing platform Blockparty.

In 2014, the Kings became the first NBA team to accept bitcoin as payment in its arena.

Kings Tokens will exist within a token wallet within the Golden 1 Center app, which tracks the engagement and accumulated points of fans.

The token will be an ERC-20 token based on ethereum but will only initially be usable within the team's Golden 1 Center arena.

While fans won't be able to trade the token for another currency or have a private key, they will be able to show a QR code to redeem points and see the confirmation of transactions through a block explorer.

In testnet now, the sports team plans to launch the token by opening night on Oct. 25.

In future iterations, token users may be able to transfer tokens to their peers, and earn rewards by eating at nearby restaurants or making it to the game before tip-off, Ginzburg added.

"Forty-one games of 20,000 people - I'm going to go ahead and say that many of those people don't own any crypto whatsoever. Suddenly by downloading the Golden 1 Center app, they are going to have an ERC-20 wallet with an ERC-20 token."