Alumna helped to develop Top Shot for digital collectibles.
What do blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and professional basketball have in common?
The answer is NBA Top Shot, the NBA’s marketplace for digital collectibles, created in part by Adrienne O’Keeffe ’04, head of digital consumer products at the NBA.
On the platform, users can purchase groups or “packs” of video clips, known as “Moments,” from NBA games. Packs are often themed to coincide with key moments of the NBA season, such as NBA playoffs or NBA finals, and feature moments from several players. “Each Moment includes a video highlight, a photo from the highlight, and game stats,” O’Keeffe explains. “What makes these unique is blockchain’s ability to verify scarcity and ownership. Digital goods with these properties behave more like real-world assets. Once you buy a Moment, you have it and own it. It’s an evolution of traditional fan behaviors like collecting trading cards or game tickets.” Users can then sell or trade individual Moments on the Top Shot peer-to-peer marketplace.
“It’s an evolution of traditional fan behaviors like collecting trading cards or game tickets.”
For O’Keeffe, NBA Top Shot combines her lifelong love of sports with an avid interest in technology. After graduating from Colgate with a degree in economics, O’Keeffe started her career in IT research. Later, while earning an MBA from Columbia Business School, she became interested in pursuing a career in sports. Her first job after graduate school was with Peter Farnsworth ’92 at his brand and business development firm, Foxrock Partners. One of the projects she worked on there introduced her to the NBA, which offered her a position in their global marketing partnerships department in 2014.
“I started out on the sports marketing side, then moved to the product side in 2016,” O’Keeffe says. “I was responsible for the league’s non-apparel licensing business and oversaw a number of categories ranging from video games to toys, food, and headphones.” She partnered with companies to bring NBA-branded products to market, noting the increasing popularity of digital products within the video game community. “In 2017, a friend introduced me to cryptocurrency and blockchain and this idea of verifiable digital ownership,” says O’Keeffe. “It resonated with me because I could already see people in our video game community buying digital shoes and apparel for their avatars. It was not a big leap to imagine that fans would respond positively to the idea of owning a digital piece of NBA memorabilia.”
Learning about the emerging blockchain technology prompted O’Keeffe to create NBA Top Shot as a way to engage fans. After reviewing several potential partner companies, O’Keeffe chose Dapper Labs and started working on the product in 2018. “They built out the tech while we were approving, advising, and working together closely along the way,” she says. NBA Top Shot launched in 2020, during the height of the pandemic when games were played in Orlando with no fans present. Even without a marketing campaign, the platform saw slow and steady growth in the beginning — and then it grew exponentially.
Before long, overseeing digital consumer products for the NBA became O’Keeffe’s primary job description. “It went from being 5% of my job to 500%,” she says. In the future, she expects to see many more digital product categories introduced across the world of sports. “With all of these trends — NFTs, Web3, and the Metaverse — coalescing right now, it’s an interesting time to work in the space. Technology is unlocking the opportunity to create new forms of online interactions and experiences for fans and is enabling new products that bring fans closer to the game.”
O’Keeffe enjoys her front-row seat watching the tech develop. “I love helping the NBA stay at the forefront of these trends. It’s fast-paced, challenging, and ever evolving — but very rewarding.”