The Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban just announced that his NBA team will start accepting cryptocurrencies for tickets and merchandise this upcoming season. The team will start by accepting Bitcoin, Ethereum’s ether, and CyberMiles tokens. The Mavericks will become one of the first professional teams to accept the new currency and the only professional team to accept Ethereum and CyberMiles tokens.
Two other professional sports teams already accept Bitcoin to some extent, the Sacramento Kings (NBA) and San Jose Earthquakes (MLS). The San Jose Earthquakes only accept Bitcoin in its online merchandise store and the Sacramento Kings only accept Bitcoin for tickets and merchandise via their website. The news coming from Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks will assure them to be the first professional team outside of California to start accepting cryptocurrencies and the first professional team to accept altcoins.
Cuban recently held a press conference where he announced that the team’s jersey patch sponsor will be 5Miles. 5Miles is a Dallas-based company that produces an application to buy and sell local goods, it is like Craigslist with a narrower scope and a flashy layout. During the press conference, he stated that this is probably the first deal ever done for a jersey patch where the first exchange was a white piece of paper on cryptocurrencies. He also stated that they want to take the lead on combining the blockchain to the marketplace. He stated that he believes it will create a safer and more secure marketplace environment. He also claimed that the Mavericks accepting crypto was a big reason they decided to go with their new sponsor. Starting with the 2018 season the Mavericks will accept BTC, ETH and possibly some other cryptocurrencies. Cuban said that the team will also look at accepting tokens and coins from companies that they have traditional business relations with to expand their customer base.
This breakthrough announcement came just weeks after Sports Illustrated reported the Mavericks host a “corrosive workplace culture” and “misogyny and predatory sexual behavior”. Recently an alleged sexual assault case resurfaced involving Mark Cuban and a girl at a nightclub in Oregon. Prosecutors never pursued the case and Cuban claims it never happened. Some skeptics wonder if this crypto announcement is a way of diverting attention from his personal troubles.
Cuban is no stranger to the tech world. He was flat broke before he started his own business MicroSolutions, which he eventually sold for 6 million dollars in 1990. He claims that even today he likes to stay on top of the tech industry and is currently taking a computer programming class. With a net worth of 3.7 billion dollars, it is no surprise that Cuban, the tech industry giant, will try his luck with cryptocurrency. Cuban is already a backer of crypto industry firms such as the crypto-asset investment fund (1confirmation) and Unikrn. Unikrn recently had an initial coin offering and raised 31 million dollars.
Many other online companies have already started accepting Bitcoin and Ethereum as payment most notably online gambling sites and sports betting services. Some of the bigger names in the industry such as BetOnline.ag and Sportsbetting.ag have been accepting Bitcoin and ether for some time now. Users love it too because of the fast transaction times. With Bitcoin, ether and other altcoins, online entities don’t have to wait for financial institutions to release funds so the transactions are instant in most cases. Ether and Bitcoin are both based on a world value scale, so they can easily be converted into any form of currency around the world.
Altcoins are taking a major step forward with the Mavericks deal and we are likely to see other professional teams jump on the crypto ship. There is no doubt that Bitcoin has exploded over the past couple of years and now it looks as if other altcoins will also follow suit. Ethereum is a lot more than just a decentralized alternate currency. It is a blockchain based network that offers more services than Bitcoin. Investors are excited to see where Ethereum will go in the future and the developers claim that the best is yet to come for the blockchain based decentralized platform.