A Sports DAO for fans who want to play at managing their teams. The DAO will make proposals regarding everything that matters for the team, and prove to the world that fans make better decisions! Or not
Fans will be rewarded by DAO tokens, and gain reputation. If the DAO proves worthy, this could become a semi official channel for teams to make decisions.
Funding will come partially from subscription fees, and partially from the teams themselves - they get an engaged fan base, and potentially good advice. It’s definitely good PR for the teams, and leagues.
I see this iteration of the Sports DAO as a way to bridge the intense engagement of sports fans in blogs, twitter, etc., and an actual ownership of teams. No DAO is buying the New York Knicks from James Dolan right now, but DAOs can help fans become part of the way teams make decisions, and later start owning their own teams in smaller leagues.
I think there are two steps to start the process. One is to create a detailed spec, and a UI/UX design for a sports DAO. I was hoping to get $4000-$5000 from this community to do it.
Then it’s implementation of the site on top of the DAO platform, and start customer acquisition. Before becoming a software developer I was a sports writer so I have a deep understanding of the domain, especially in the NBA.
What mechanisms are you thinking of using for this?
Are there any teams interested in collaborating on a pilot program with you? Also, is there a specific sub-genre of sports that you’re looking at? (basketball, e-sports, etc…)
There are certain rules to this game, and fans would be rewarded for making good decisions. In other words decisions that would prove, over time, to be the right ones for the team. Sports in the U.S., where I think of starting, are very much stats oriented and (almost) everything is measurable. If the DAO recommends drafting a certain player, and the numbers show that it was a good decision, the DAO would be rewarded and so will everyone who voted in favor.
During the initial stage we will curate the DAO participants, interviewing them to make sure they are real fans of the team. We will also recruit a handful of Twitter and YouTube influencers to provide credible input based on professional or semi-professional involvement with the team and its success.
A team’s DAO will comprise several tiers:
Starters – about 20 fans with high reputation. Their opinions will rate the highest, and they will get a larger part of the reward.
Roster – about 50 fans, including the starters.
Development league roster – approximately 150 participants.
Fans – everyone else.
Mobility between the tiers will depend on the quality of the fans’ decisions, and to a lesser extent, on their level of activity.
I’m thinking of basketball in the U.S. I was a sports writer for a time, covered the NBA and I know it intimately. Before approaching the league, or other basketball leagues – and there are many – I need a product, or at least a UX/UI that I can show them what are they signing on. The current DAO platforms are unintelligible to most people. I tried quite a bit to explain to non-crypto people what’s it about, and most of them return blank stares.
For example “The Knicks should fire the coach”. Or “The Lakers should draft player X”. Or the Celtics should trade for player Y".
There would be categories of proposals according to their type, and maybe also according to their reward cycle, in other words how long would it take to know if the result was good, or not.
And what would the benefit of using a DAO for this be over opening a prediction market?
Love the idea, just challenging the value of having a DAO for it.
I’d also like to point out that the “members” would largely be crypto people (mostly within MC) so I would approach it with the assumption that “Should the Knicks first their coach” would probably have no real-world impact if we were to vote “Yes”.
I see this DAO as a bridge between the current ways fans spend time together – in chat rooms, blogs, youtube channels, fantasy leagues, and the games themselves – and actually owning teams (in small leagues) or part of teams. So a decision would be a way to stop the chatter momentarily and put a stick in the ground, stating “this is where we are on an important issue”. Making a stand of sorts.
If the DAO proves itself, I think it would eventually get funded by the teams as well. They’d get a more engaged fan base, and sometimes good advice.
In short this is a progression of an existing thing – fans love for their teams.
This is really powerful. Have you considered exploring this for fantasy sports or online games (digital native) before moving into IRL assets and decisions?
Yes, I did. It’s a large, and growing market and I believe there’s money to make there for DAOs. I also looked at the API for the large fantasy platforms and they aren’t really ready for integration with something like a DAO. So the development effort, both software and business, would be significantly larger before going to market.
Which of course doesn’t make it impossible. I think it all starts with good UX/UI so an actual product can be demonstrated to people outside of our little community.
