A week after the announcement that the famed Staples Center in Los Angeles will be renamed the Crypto.com Arena, the city plays host to another landmark crypto event, as a player for the NFL team the L.A. Rams has announced he will receive his US$4.25 million salary for the 2021-22 season in Bitcoin.
Fast facts
- Odell Beckham Jr. has partnered with payments giant Square’s CashApp to receive the salary and to facilitate a US$1 million giveaway in Bitcoin to his Twitter followers to mark the occasion. The giveaway will last until either Friday, Dec. 10, or until the funds have been depleted. Fans looking to enter the draw will need to reply to his tweet with their Cash App $Cashtag and the hashtag #OBJBTC.
- This follows fellow player Aaron Rogers of the Green Bay Packers who announced he would be taking a portion of his salary in Bitcoin and also run a US$1 million Bitcoin giveaway on social media earlier this month. Rogers had also partnered with CashApp to receive his salary and for the giveaway.
- Forkast.News reported last week that the Staples Center in L.A., home to such sporting teams as the Lakers, Clippers, Sparks and the Kings, would change its name to the Crypto.com Arena by Dec. 25 in a deal worth US$700 million — one of the biggest in sporting history. It follows a similar move by fellow crypto exchange FTX, which paid US$135 million in March to rename the home stadium of the Miami Heat.
- Perhaps inspired by ConstitutionDAO’s unsuccessful attempt to purchase an original copy of the U.S. constitution recently, another decentralized autonomous organization, Krause House, has formed with the intention of buying an NBA team. Named after the famed former Chicago Bulls manager, the late Jerry Krause, the DAO has already raised over US$1.7 million in Ethereum. Adam Soffer, contributor to Krause House, was pointed towards the DAO after tweeting he believed it was only a matter of time before a DAO owned a sporting team late last week.
- “High probability a DAO purchases a professional sports team within the next 10 years,” Soffer wrote. “Proceeds from NFT ticket sales get paid out to members. Delegated council members have decision-making power over who to draft, contract negotiation, etc. Not hard to imagine.”
- Despite the strong start, the DAO has a long way to go yet; the Brooklyn Nets sold for US$3.3 billion in 2019 as the most expensive sale in the league’s history, while the average value of a team in the world’s premier basketball league is US$2.2 billion, according to Hoop Hype. And money is only one part of the problem as any sale of a team in the NBA needs to have the approval of three-fourths of the owners of the remaining clubs as well as the NBA commissioner before the sale can go through — making it much more difficult to buy into the NBA than other sporting leagues.
