As California’s Silicon Valley continues to be a hot spot for blockchain and cryptocurrency investors, another big announced took place today with the FTX Platform and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
The Bay Area’s Golden State Warriors have agreed to an international rights sponsorship with crypto platform FTX.
The terms were not made public, however it’s being reported as a multiyear deal valued at about $10 million dollars. The people discussed the deal on the condition of remaining anonymous as they aren’t authorized to discuss contract specifics. It’s the first global deal for the $5.6 billion Golden State Warriors.
FTX, worth about $25 billion, is one of the world’s largest digital currency exchanges and competes with the likes of Binance, Kraken and Coinbase.
“FTX is a company that caught our eyes a couple of months ago,” Warriors president and chief operating officer Brandon Schneider said in an interview. “We think we’re at the beginning of the beginning. We’re all learning, and this space will evolve quite a bit,” Schneider added.
It’s the latest such agreement for FTX, which has an umpire jersey deal with Major League Baseball. It also took over naming rights to the Miami Heat arena in a deal reportedly valued at $135 million over 19 years.
“We think they’re a market leader headed in the right direction,” Schneider said of FTX.
The NBA started to allow clubs to leverage international agreements in 2019 in an effort to expand its global footprint
FTX gets brand placement with the Warriors’ G League club and the NBA 2K esports team, in-arena signage at Chase Center, and obtains the team’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) rights.
FTX will also get virtual floor inventory on Warriors regional sports network games. The digital logos are shown on TV during local and national NBA games, resembling actual floor signage. Industry insiders suggest that virtual ads solicit roughly $15,000 per quarter.
Most Warriors games air on an RSN property owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
The Warriors and FTX also collaborated to donate one bitcoin to three local nonprofit organizations that address educational equity, including Self-eSTEM, Mission Bit and Techbridge Girls.
“The community supports us so much, and we want to give that back,” Schneider said.
The deal comes as the franchise reemerges during the NBA’s 75th Anniversary season. The Warriors have one of the best winning records this season and their superstar Stephen Curry is putting on a show.
Curry is close to breaking Ray Allen’s record for most three-pointers. Allen leads with 2,973 three-pointers, and Curry is just two away from overtaking him.
