Coinbase Inks Sponsorship Deal With NBA, WNBA

Coinbase follows rival FTX with a big push into sports marketing.

2 min read

Oct 19, 2021

Coinbase announced a series of tie-ups with professional basketball on Tuesday, declaring that it will be the "exclusive cryptocurrency platform partner" for the NBA and the WNBA, as well as for NBA affiliate leagues, and USA Basketball.

The company said the arrangement will be on display starting tonight as the NBA's season kicks off with a "brand presence" during national televised games.

In a blog post, the U.S.-based exchange said the sponsorship will span multiple years and involve content creation as well as campaigns that will aim to educate fans about developments in the cryptocurrency world.

“As a trusted cryptocurrency platform used by millions, Coinbase is a natural fit as the NBA’s first-ever partner in this thriving category,” said Kerry Tatlock, the NBA's SVP of Global Marketing Partnerships and Media, in a statement.

Coinbase's sponsorship deal comes after rival FTX has aggressively pushed into the field of sports marketing, including forging a deal with Major League Baseball that has seen FTX logos appear on every umpire's uniform.

FTX also signed an agreement to put its name on the arena of the NBA's Miami Heat—creating a potentially awkward situation when it comes to televised basketball games in Miami.

"Hehe. Good for them!" FTX's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, replied in response to a question about the potential for overlapping sponsorships during Miami Heat games. Coinbase did not offer a comment.

The NBA has already been active on the cryptocurrency front, most notably through its NFT program known as TopShot. The league's NFT activities are currently being backed by Dapper Labs and its Flow blockchain. It's unclear whether that arrangement will remain in place or if Coinbase, which is launching an NFT platform of its own, will seek to exert control over basketball-related NFTs.

In addition to the NBA and WNBA, the Coinbase sponsorship covers the NBA G League and NBA 2K League.

This story was updated to include comment from FTX's founder.

Get crypto news straight to your inbox--

sign up for the Decrypt Daily below. (It’s free).

Get Email!

United States of Bitcoin? These States Are Considering BTC Reserves

Donald Trump and his political allies are plugging away at plans to stockpile Bitcoin at a national level in the U.S. Treasury. And now, with the asset’s price repeatedly soaring to new peaks since Election Day, some U.S. states are following suit. So far, three states are fielding proposals to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves, while digital asset advocates are calling for other local governments to do the same. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Is Now on the Table—Here's How It Could Work Here'...

AI Won’t Tell You How to Build a Bomb—Unless You Say It’s a 'b0mB'

Remember when we thought AI security was all about sophisticated cyber-defenses and complex neural architectures? Well, Anthropic's latest research shows how today’s advanced AI hacking techniques can be executed by a child in kindergarten. Anthropic—which likes to rattle AI doorknobs to find vulnerabilities to later be able to counter them—found a hole it calls a “Best-of-N (BoN)” jailbreak. It works by creating variations of forbidden queries that technically mean the same thing, but are expre...

Elon Musk and Dogecoin: How the Billionaire Became the 'Dogefather'

As Dogecoin makes a comeback off the back of Bitcoin’s surge, some may be pondering: Where did the asset come from? What’s it for? And what’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk got to do with it? The original meme coin’s boom largely has the world’s richest man to thank. Musk’s obsession with shitposting helped boost the coin to a top 10 cryptocurrency. It’s been a wacky ride over the past few years, culminating in Musk's appointment to co-lead a government agency called D.O.G.E.—yes, really. But we'll explai...

News

Courses

Deep Dives

Coins

Videos