This Week on NBA Top Shot: Kevin Durant Marketing Begins
by Chris Otis
1/21/2022
Welcome back to This Week on NBA Top Shot, a weekly blog from Otis Top Shot and your friends here at MomentRanks that dives into each week’s essential NBA Top Shot news and updates. Pack drops, Flash Challenges, marketplace insights, noteworthy sales, community news; we’ve got you covered on all of it and more.
Everything that happens on Top Shot can be a lot to keep up with — but you’ll be able to find it all here every week. This week saw arguably the biggest and most important content in NBA Top Shot history go live, so without further ado, let’s dive in!
tl;dr: This Week on NBA Top Shot
“Wen marketing?” is a question that’s been asked so often over the past year or so throughout the NBA Top Shot community that it’s begun to feel less like a meme and more like an exasperated cry for help. But finally, it seems we have our answer: NOW!
Kevin Durant, who partnered with Dapper Labs and Top Shot alongside Rich Kleiman, Boardroom, and Thirty Five Ventures back in October, has essentially just been unveiled as the official superstar face of NBA Top Shot with this ad, which is currently airing across all major social media platforms (and likely on TV in the near future).
Upon the release of this commercial, Top Shot posted a blog titled “The Kevin Durant NBA Top Shot Takeover Starts Now”, which announced the first bit of key news: new users will now have the opportunity to buy a starter pack that includes a guaranteed bonus KD Moment (more on that later).
This was then followed up by the announcement of the first Holo Icon drop and second MGLE drop of S3, which are coming next week and were undoubtedly scheduled to coincide with having thousands of new eyes gazing on the platform.
This huge marketing push deserves a deep dive, which will be coming in another post later this weekend, but for now, let’s take a look at the incredible week that was.
Top Shot Market Update
In the wake of such exciting news, one has to wonder what the marketplace reaction is going to look like. We’re only a couple days into this new era of Top Shot marketing, so it will be some time before we can truly see the effects of this ad spot and any other promotional activities that have yet to come, but let’s have a look at this week’s marketplace metrics and see what the early data says.
Top Shot Marketplace Metrics
Sustaining what we saw last week, the MR100 metric continues to sort of plateau in the range of about 2300. There does seem to be some really slow, steady growth here, so perhaps this is actually a sign of a healthy marketplace and ecosystem rather than anything worrisome. The Total Market Cap, on the other hand, continued to surge from around $790 million to over $830 million, signaling increasing floor prices across the platform.
Looking at the 24-hour metrics, the effects of the KD announcement a couple days ago are quite pronounced, with tangible increases visible across the Transactions, Sales Volume, and Unique Buyers and Sellers metrics. Of course, Flash Challenges probably have as much to do with these numbers as anything else, but while there’s always a similarity between the three charts, it’s rare that all three show such a strikingly similar trend simultaneously like this.
The 24-hour Unique Buyers and Sellers metric in particular saw remarkable numbers, with peaks of 31,752 unique sellers and 21,563 unique buyers on January 20, the highest figures seen for each since July and June, respectively.
Biggest Top Shot Sales this week
Unsurprisingly, the top sales this past week were dominated by Kevin Durant, with three of his Series 1 Run It Back Moments selling for $20K+. The biggest sale of the week, though, came from Haku’s $65,000 purchase of a Legendary S1 LeBron James From the Top Moment, one of the biggest sales the platform has seen in months. A Rare S1 Ja Morant jersey serial match (#12) also went for $25,000.
Top Shot Pack Drops
It was a relatively quiet week as far as packs are concerned, with a lone Base Set release being the only pack drop that occurred. As mentioned above, the Series 3 debut of Holo Icon as well as the second round of MGLE packs will drop next Tuesday, and another round of Series 1 Reserve packs will be released a couple days after those drops, so it’s safe to say the pack lull experienced this week will be short-lived.
Series 3 Base Set (Release 7)
The latest drop of S3 Base Set packs came this past Tuesday, January 18, with 150,000 new packs being released into the Top Shot ecosystem. 17 all-new Moments were in this drop, including Kevin Durant’s new narrated Moment, basketball icon Lance Stephenson’s Top Shot Debut, and Jalen Green’s three-star rookie Moment, which is now going for well over $400 on the marketplace as the undoubted gem of the drop.
Kevin Durant Starter Pack
As part of Kevin Durant’s Top Shot takeover, the next 50,000 new users to Top Shot are being offered an extra special starter pack that’ll include a guaranteed Kevin Durant Series 3 Base Set Moment (x/60,000) in addition to the three usual random Moments in the pack. This is truly an incredible way to get started on the platform, and the KD Moment offers some additional utility, as we’ll see below,
This Week in Top Shot Challenges
Another week brought another flurry of Flash Challenges that kept collectors engaged on a near-nightly basis. This week saw some unique twists tossed in though, so let’s recap what went down.
Showcase Challenges
The one “traditional” style Showcase Challenge we saw this week was the second and final challenge tied in with the first Hustle and Show drop we saw earlier this month. The reward was an incredible Steph Curry Moment that saw Steph pick up a loose ball and heave a no-look, over-the-head outlet pass on a dime to teammate Jordan Poole, who slammed home the ball with ease. The Moment wound up with a mint count of 8,539.
New Top Shot Flash Challenges
Last weekend kicked off with the first of several Flash Challenges, Weekend Vibes, which was different in that it was based off the entirety of the weekend NBA slate, featuring all the games from Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — as opposed to highlighting just a single night of NBA action. Users had to collect and showcase Moments from each of the 10 players who led the entire weekend in scoring across the NBA. The reward was a Jaylen Brown MSFE Moment from his recent 50-point performance, which was ultimately minted to a count of 11,778.
Next up was Marathon Runners, which was a two-tiered Flash Challenge based on the NBA’s leaders in minutes played on Monday, January 17. For both the easy and hard tracks, users had to create a showcase that included the 10 players who led the day’s action in minutes played, with the easy track allowing Moments from any tier, and the hard track requiring all Moments be Rare, Legendary, or Fandom-tier Moments. The easy track reward was a Joel Embiid MSFE Moment that was minted to 1,443, and the hard-track reward was a Rare Series 2 pack.
Then, after the Kevin Durant ad and takeover announcement, another Flash Challenge went live: Get ‘Em Up. Another two-tiered challenge based on January 19’s leaders in shots attempted, with a KD-inspired twist.
For the easy track, collectors had to make a showcase with Moments from the five players who led the night in shots attempted, and any additional Kevin Durant Moment. For the hard track, the showcase had to include the top seven players in shots attempted along with any three Kevin Durant Moments. The easy track reward was a Series 2 Base Set pack, and the hard reward was a Trae Young MSFE Moment, which was minted to 10,495.
Miscellaneous Top Shot Updates
Some other things of note to occur this week include:
- Jacob Eisenberg helped KD pick out his first Moments on the marketplace in this promo video.
- Across the Dapperverse, UFC Strike was officially unveiled and has its first packs dropping this weekend, and NFL All Day has its first ever Playoff packs coming as well.
- NBA Top Shot and Flash Challenges got a shout-out in Yahoo Fantasy Basketball’s player news section for Cody Martin, signaling a first in fantasy sports news.
The Week Ahead on Top Shot
Tuesday, January 25 will see the aforementioned Holo Icon and MGLE drops occur throughout the day, starting with the Priority Queue for Holo Icon at 9 a.m. PST/12 p.m. EST, which will be followed by the Holo Icon General Queue at 10:30 a.m. PST/1:30 p.m. EST. Then, at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST, the Priority Queue for MGLE will begin, and finally the MGLE General Queue will be at 2 p.m. PST/5 p.m. EST.
Plenty of incredible Moments will be within both drops, with the Holo Icon set including buzzer beaters from Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, and Devonte’ Graham, and the MGLE drop including stars such as Steph Curry and LaMelo Ball. A total of 1,400 Holo Icon packs will be available for purchase across both queues, and 8,250 MGLE packs will be released as well.
Following those drops a couple days later, the third release of the Series 1 Reserves packs will be coming on Thursday, January 27 at 11 a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST. There will be 500 of these packs available for purchase, once again at a cost of 350 trade tickets, and each pack will be guaranteed one Moment that’s minted to just 1,000, and three more with mint counts ranging up to 3,999.
.png?w=750&ssl=1)
In addition to the pack drops, there will be Showcase Challenges for both the Holo Icon and MGLE sets throughout the next week or so, as well as Flash Challenges to keep users engaged with the NBA and Top Shot nearly every night of the week.
Also, considering that Kevin Durant’s Top Shot takeover seems to just be beginning, I’d imagine that we’ll see a lot more KD-related content in the coming weeks as well, possibly including the curated set alluded to in the Series 3 Roadmap. We shall see!
That’s all for this week everyone, thanks for reading and I’ll see you all back here next Friday.