MLB team will HODL Bitcoin received from suite sales, says president

Dave Kaval, president of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics, says the ball club will be HODLing any Bitcoin that fans pay for luxury seats at the team ballpark in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

In an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, Kaval said no baseball fans had yet taken advantage of the opportunity to buy a full season, six-person suite for the home season for 1 Bitcoin (BTC) since the deal was first announced on March 15. Though the A’s club president said he was still hopeful “two or three” people will buy tickets for the ten suites available, he also clarified that any crypto received from purchases wouldn’t be converted into fiat right away.

“We’re gonna hold it,” said Kaval. “We’re believers in [Bitcoin] and hopefully it continues to go up and maybe we can find some big free agents with some of the proceeds.”

The BTC price dipped to $51,000 since the initial sales announcement, meaning crypto users who purchased the suite at just the right time could have saved more than $13,000 compared to the regular full season fiat price of $64,800. The price of the crypto asset has since returned to more than $57,000.

Kaval said part of the reason for the change to selling the tickets in crypto was the baseball club offering “something unique and different.” Though he said the A’s would not be accepting other tokens like Ether (ETH) or Dogecoin (DOGE) this week, there is the possibility of doing so in the future.

“We’re focused on just Bitcoin for now, but I think if it catches on, and we get interest, we are open.”

Bitcoin sales for the suites will still be accepted before April 1, when the Oakland A’s first game is scheduled against the Houston Astros. Though the status of the game may still be subject to change depending on COVID-19 cases in the state, at the time of publication, roughly 9,400 baseball fans are expected to be allowed at the A’s RingCentral Coliseum on Thursday — less than 20% of the 63,132 people when the venue is at full capacity.

Many Major League Baseball players have also become involved in the non-fungible token market. Last month, former MLB player-turned artist Micah Johnson sold $1 million worth of tokenized art in just one minute on Nifty Gateway.