'Sports Engagement Is Stuck In The Past': Tristan Thompson Is Bringing Fantasy Basketball On-Chain

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Former NBA player Tristan Thompson is trying to reimagine fan engagement with a blockchain-based platform.

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"Sports engagement is stuck in the past," Thompson said on X last week, adding that he intended to change the status quo with a platform called basketball.fun.

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Basketball.fun is a fantasy basketball platform that will launch on Somnia, a newly-launched blockchain purpose-built to support large-scale applications, Thompson said in another X post last week. The platform said that it will launch on the opening night of the NBA season, scheduled for Oct. 21.

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Basketball.fun will tokenize NBA players instead of adopting the typical fan token model popularized by projects like Socios, CoinDesk reported, citing a press release. The value assigned to player-themed tokens will fluctuate in real time in response to sentiment and performance, the outlet reported. Fans will earn from speculating on rising talent, according to CoinDesk.

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Thompson is partnering with Improbable CEO Herman Narula and co-founder Hadi Teherany to launch the project, CoinDesk reported.

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"The way fans value and perceive players should be different than owners and news networks," Teherany told CoinDesk. "We're trying to give power back to the fan — not just to predict who they think is great, but to actually earn incentives from it. Imagine being able to prove that the fan consensus on a rookie's potential is more accurate than a team's front office."

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Teherany also told CoinDesk that the decision not to launch a token for basketball.fun was partly informed by experiences from a previous project called TracyAI, a basketball-focused AI agent also launched by Thompson. According to Teherany, the project has become too dependent on the token performance. The project’s token TRACY was last trading at $0.000078, down 99.6% from its February price record of $0.018.

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Thompson has become a vocal advocate of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in recent years. He has cited the missed opportunity to put all or part of an $82 million 2015 contract in Bitcoin as motivation to educate others, especially younger players in the NBA, about the industry. As part of this effort, he recently launched a podcast called "Courtside Crypto."

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Thompson’s involvement in the cryptocurrency space aligns with a growing trend of professional athletes turning to cryptocurrencies to preserve their wealth. Last week, it was reported that NBA star Kevin Durant had purchased Bitcoin in 2016 for approximately $650 per coin. The asset was most recently trading at $112,000.

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This article 'Sports Engagement Is Stuck In The Past': Tristan Thompson Is Bringing Fantasy Basketball On-Chain originally appeared on Benzinga.com

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