Are we really halfway through 2021? Time is absolutely flying. Six months ago, fewer than five thousand collectors had a Moment in their collections. This past weekend, 185,000 collectors bought themselves a common 2021 NBA Playoffs pack. We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time.
As we round out June, we want to share a few new updates and preview some upgrades we’re excited about.
These past few weeks have brought a ton of new features to the community. Bonuses for collecting around your favorite teams and by your favorite sets adds strategy and utility to every Moment on Top Shot. Quests allow for flexible participation and earnable prizes. Everything we’re testing today is designed to make a long-term impact once perfected.
We’ve deepened our amazing bench with important hires like our new General Manager, Tristan Rattink and our new Head of Communications, Nate Nesbitt, who will be dedicated to NBA Top Shot.
The Collector Experience
While we are focused on improving the new collector experience, we’re also taking significant strides that we know our core collector base will appreciate. For example, as of last week, you can now filter your Marketplace search to find Moments that are required for active challenges.
Additionally, we’ve introduced a warning message to let you know when you’re trying to buy a Moment that another collector is in the process of purchasing from the Marketplace.
Also worth highlighting, the recently released Moment Tracker makes it easier than ever for collectors to have a complete picture of what is owned and what is still to be released. More details can be found in this blog.
We’ve got a lot more on the way. Among other things coming soon, we’re excited to share that our next rare drop will likely introduce a system that’ll reward established collectors with multiple bites at the apple around rare and legendary pack drops, while still keeping the door open for a new collector to work themselves into eligibility. Practically speaking, this means that active collectors will have three different queues to snag a pack. Those with high Collector Scores will have better odds of snagging rare and legendary packs through priority access, but less established collectors will still have a puncher’s chance at the rares and legendaries. More details still to come in the next couple of weeks.
New collectors are enjoying Top Shot faster than ever before
Understanding how new collectors engage with NBA Top Shot is extremely important, because it teaches us how to optimize the experience for everyone.
In May, we introduced pack reservations to help new collectors enjoy Top Shot faster. However, it wasn’t enough. Reserving a spot in a queue days in advance for the right to come back days later to purchase the reservation proved to be onerous and impractical for the first-time collector journey. As a result, we introduced Starter Packs a couple of weeks ago, allowing new collectors to rip a pack on their first visit to the site. We improved it further with the rollout of Team Quests, giving new collectors a natural progression path to onboard and qualify for 2021 NBA Playoffs packs. The numbers show we’re making strides:
Data shows that new collectors are enjoying Top Shot faster than ever before. We believe highly-regarded common packs are a great entry-level pack to get a relatively new collector excited. As we’ve said before and will say again, common Moments are designed to be common and will forever be designed to be common. Ensuring fantastic plays from incredible players are accessible and available to collectors from their first baby steps into the world of Top Shot is what has proven to turn NBA fans from around the world into fully immersed collectors seeking out those scarce and extra special rare and legendary Moments.
Progress is being made daily. We’re here for long-term success, and we’re building a multi-generational experience. We’re also actively listening to you every single step of the way. We floated an experimental survey this week to see if the community had an appetite to share their opinions. We were floored by the response, and we want to continue to hear from you as we build this epic product together.
We are using the insights from this first survey to inform our plans for Edition Sizes for content in the off-season and going into next season. We’re also building more surveys to continue to gather feedback. Stay tuned for an exciting July.
