48: Crowd Owned Sports Teams & The Future of Professional Sports // Krause House

Krause House is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) governed by a community of fans, basketball lovers, and purists. Their goal is to purchase & operate an NBA team as a DAO. Today, Krause House is the first DAO to buy a professional basketball team as owners of the Ball Hogs, an American men’s 3-on-3 basketball team that plays in the BIG3 league.

Together, Krause House will write the consensus rules that will bring the first fan-governed team to the NBA. The collective of ambitious contributors whose goal is to own an NBA team describes the underlying mission of DAOs in its purest form: Difficult by one, achievable by many.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 1:29 Eric introduces Krause House and what they are doing.
• 2:56 Commodore shares what it feels like to have fractional ownership of a team.
• 5:11 Building a better fan engagement experience in the arena was the focus of Krause House this season.
• 7:04 All the missing pieces are starting to come together this season and it is an exciting stage for Krause House.
• 9:21 A summary of what has happened to Krause House within the last 9 to 12 months.
• 10:27 Seeing that the Philippines are huge NBA fans, Krause House did a lot of local projects in this country geared towards building their internet home team strategy.
• 15:57 Commodore discusses a little bit of history on the ownership of sports teams.
• 18:19 In 100 to 200 years, Commodore predicts that traditional ownership of sports teams will transition into distributed ownership and governance, and it will be a lot like crypto.
• 21:44 According to Commodore, the top players also want ownership of the team.
• 25:32 For Commodore, he sees Krause House as a 17th century harbor with ships, sailors, and explorers.
• 27:08 More discussion on the inner workings that is happening in Krause House.
• 29:16 In Krause House, any NFT holder can make a proposal. Commodore talks about their proposal and voting process.
• 31:28 Commodore explains the 3-day shorter time range for their proposal process.
• 34:30 Building the credibility of Krause House involves sitting down with NBA owners and getting their feedback.
• 39:34 There is a basketball tournament in Guatemala that Krause House is currently focusing on.
• 41:53 Commodore talks about how he is going to push the internet home team narrative to establish more credibility.
• 44:22 They had a deal with the Phoenix Suns but it didn’t push through, and Commodore is having a tough time sharing the story to the public.
• 44:55 Eric reminds everyone who is interested in following his twitter spaces or wants to be a guest or co-host of this show to ping him at @memebrains
• 47:16 Commodore emphasizes the power of the founder’s vision, which he thinks should not be abandoned immediately on this road towards decentralization.
• 52:26 Krause House likes people who are doers. Commodore talks about how people can get involved in Krause House.

Key Points from this Interview:

1. “You’re talking about the Ball Hogs, I’m thinking about our big matchup this weekend, which I think we have to win and we need a little bit of help to make the playoffs and so it’s a little nerve wracking but it’s been fun to experience fractionalized ownership and sort of this allegiance of not really having any allegiance to the Ball Hogs, and then Krause House being involved in the Ball Hogs and all the things that goes into that.”
2. “I do think the power of the Founder’s vision is something that we’ve seen a model work so damn well in the traditional startup ecosystem, that to me, it’s worth us making sure we don’t abandon it too aggressively in the spirit of this full community, full decentralized, full leaderless structure.”

Resources Mentioned: