NBA legend Michael Jordan teams up with Solana for “Heir” community platform

Widely acknowledged as the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan, with help from Solana, is turning his hand to NFTs.

The new venture will be handled under the formation of a holding company, known as “Heir Inc,” co-founded by Jordan’s oldest son, Jeffrey.

“The company was co-founded by Jeffrey Jordan along with marketing exec Daniel George, founder of agency Limitless Creative, and Jeron Smith, former CEO/co-founder of Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media.”

Heir Inc is billed as a “consumer-facing community platform for athletes to connect with fans.” It also has plans to build an entertainment studio and sell consumer products as well.

How is Solana involved with Heir Inc?

Heir raised $10 million in seed funding to launch the project. The round was led by New York-based VC firm Thrive Capital, and others, including Chicago Bulls guard Lonzo Ball, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Michael Jordan, and Solana Ventures.

Solana Ventures is the strategic investment arm of the Solana platform. They recently announced $150 million of funding to support Web3 game devs and NFT projects building for the Solana ecosystem.

In a joint statement, George and Smith said Heir would utilize technology to develop the future of athlete branding. At the same time, it would enable fans to benefit by gaining close access to their favorite athletes.

“We envision HEIR becoming the platform that will help cultivate the future of athlete meta-brands.

Dedicated supporters are at the heart of the platform, and they’ll benefit from early adoption ownership and unmatched access to their favorite athletes.”

What to expect

Explaining how it would work, Jeffrey Jordan said athletes would sell a limited number of “seats” to fans. In return, the fans get access to digital assets and NFT drops. All of which is underpinned by an Heir token running on the Solana blockchain.

Seat membership will also entitle fans to buy one-time digital assets or join their favorite athletes “huddle” for exclusive drops, immersive experiences, and other benefits.

“The Heir platform reimagines the creator-fan experience, to empower athletes to engage with their fans.”

Similar to how teams can profit by selling a player who has developed, fans could do the same by buying the limited tokens of a player early on in their career and selling once the player is more popular. This is especially viable for pre-draft college and pre-college athletes.

On the question of which athletes have signed up to Heir, Jeffrey Jordan remains tight-lipped. But he did say Heir has its sights on tier-1 NBA and WNBA players and up-and-coming stars in the NCAA.