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NBA Top Shot maker Dapper Labs has secured around $ 305 million in new funding from investors.
According to a Business Insider report on Tuesday, past and present NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Alex Caruso and Kevin Durant participated in the fundraising round. Other investors included The Chernin Group and Will Smith’s venture capital firm Dreamers VC.
With this latest round of funding, Dapper Labs would now hold a valuation of $ 2.6 billion. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, NBA Top Shot had grossed $ 230 million at the end of February.
According to a Dapper Labs spokesperson quoted by Business Insider, the March figures saw NBA Top Shot’s gross total reach $ 483 million with more than 802,000 users on the platform.
Indeed, the NBA Top Shot boom is part of the current interest around non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Earlier in March, an NFT collector reportedly turned down an offer of $ 1 million for an NBA Top Shot NFT initially acquired for $ 100,000 in January.
Commenting on the platform’s success, Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou said:
“NBA Top Shot is a success because it taps into the basketball fandom – it’s a new, more exciting way for people to connect with their favorite teams and players.”
Following the success of NBA Top Shot, Gharegozlou says Dapper Labs is looking to extend the “same magic” to other sports franchises. In February 2020, Dapper Labs signed an agreement with mixed martial arts promoter Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Dapper Labs also created CryptoKitties, one of the first NFT projects to gain popularity in the crypto space. At the height of the CryptoKitties craze, the digital cat breeding game became the largest decentralized Ethereum-based app.
Meanwhile, NFTs are apparently becoming more mainstream with Saturday Night Live recently featuring a rap sketch to explain new digital collectible phenomena in their usual satirical tone.
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