The Dallas Mavericks will accept Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency as payment for tickets in the 2018-19 NBA season, owner Mark Cuban has announced
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban says the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA team which he owns, will soon accept cryptocurrency as payment for tickets in the 2018-19 NBA season
The Mavericks won’t be the first sports team to accept cryptocurrency payments. The Sacramento Kings began accepting Bitcoin in 2014.
When Mark Cuban was asked on Twitter on Tuesday, “Mark, when will I be able to purchase Mavs tickets with bitcoin?”, he replied “Next Season”.
The story was first reported by Bloomberg, and in a follow-up comment to CoinDesk, Cuban confirmed the news and said that the team would take both bitcoin and ethers – as well as “possibly some other currencies.”
He explained: “We will be adding a crypto payment ability for next season. We will accept BTC, Eth, possibly some other currencies. [That’s] to be determined.”
Cuban, currently worth $3.3 billion according to Forbes, has made investments in the cryptocurrency industry (a blockchain fund and Unikrn’s digital tokens), but has cautioned others about buying bitcoin and its counterparts.
In 2017 he said “I think it’s in a bubble. I just don’t know when or how much it corrects. When everyone is bragging about how easy they are making $=bubble,” Cuban wrote on June 6 in a tweet subsequently deleted but reported by Business Insider.
He sees enough of a future in cryptocurrency that it only makes sense for his team to support it. You might not see other teams or leagues rushing to follow suit, but it does represent a vote of confidence for the emerging technology.
