You Can Finally Use Bitcoins to Buy NBA Tickets

Got some spare Bit­coins that are burn­ing a hole in your di­git­al pock­et? Good news! You will soon be able to put them to­ward watch­ing De­Marcus Cous­ins and the NBA’s Sac­ra­mento Kings.

As of March, the Kings will be the first pro-sports fran­chise to ac­cept Bit­coins for tick­et sales and team mer­chand­ise. It’s hard to ima­gine loads of NBA fans sud­denly buy­ing tick­ets and jer­seys us­ing the vir­tu­al cur­rency, as the Kings are well aware. But it’s just an­oth­er big pub­lic step for a team that’s try­ing to be on the cut­ting edge of tech use in sports.

The Sac­ra­mento Kings’ new own­er­ship prides it­self on be­ing par­tic­u­larly tech-savvy. “I want to make the Kings the poster child for the use of big data,” Kings own­er Vivek Ra­na­divé re­cently told Na­tion­al Journ­al. Hop­ping on the Bit­coin band­wag­on is an ob­vi­ous nod to that tech cul­ture.

The di­git­al cur­rency is “yet an­oth­er way” to cater to the team’s tech-ori­ented fans, says Kings Pres­id­ent Chris Granger. At least one group of fans has been ex­pli­citly clam­or­ing for the Kings to ac­cept Bit­coins. “My kids would go to games and ask why we didn’t ac­cept Bit­coin,” Ra­na­divé told ES­PN.

As of Thursday morn­ing, one Bit­coin is worth $937.45 USD on Mt. Gox, the self-pro­claimed world’s largest Bit­coin ex­change. The price of Bit­coin has been quite volat­ile over the last year, but more and more U.S. busi­nesses are start­ing to ac­cept the cur­rency. Earli­er this month, Over­stock.com be­came the first ma­jor on­line re­tail­er to al­low Bit­coin pay­ments.

Next up for the Kings? Ac­cord­ing to Ra­na­divé, the team is be­gin­ning to ex­plore what it can do with Google Glass.