'NBA 2K22' Cover Athletes Include Luka Doncic, Candace Parker As First Female In GameStop Exclusive

The top selling NBA video game announced its cover stars for "NBA 2K22" to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the NBA.

What Happened: Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic was announced as the cover athlete for the upcoming NBA 2K22 from Take-Two Interactive Software (NASDAQ: TTWO) for the standard and cross-gen digital versions. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Durant are featured on the "NBA 2K22" 75th Anniversary Edition.

“Making the global cover of NBA 2K22 is special for me,” Doncic said. “Basketball has given me so much and I’m excited to give back and work together with 2K Foundations.”

WNBA star Candace Parker will be on the North American Standard Version, making her the first female basketball player to be featured on an NBA 2K cover. The Parker cover will be a GameStop Corp (NYSE: GME) exclusive available in stores and online from GameStop and EB Games.

Parker has played in 349 WNBA games across a 13 season WNBA career posting game averages of 16.7 points, 8.6 rebounds and 3.9 assists. She ranks 12th all time in WNBA points with 5,843, 12th all time in assists with 1,376 and ninth in rebounds with 3,007.

Parker, who plays for the Chicago Sky, tweeted about the cover appearance:

Extremely proud and humbled to be the first female cover athlete in the history of @NBA2K

I’m honored to work with a company that’s investing in women and betting on us to succeed. I’m hopeful there will be many more badass females to follow �� pic.twitter.com/WJan4YE7Qt

— Candace Parker (@Candace_Parker) July 14, 2021

Related Link: Take-Two Stock Analysts See Robust Game Pipeline, Conservative Guidance 

Why It’s Important: NBA 2K is pushing to feature more women in the game and Parker appearing on the cover is the latest step in the initiative.

The standard edition of the game will retail for $59.99 on previous generation consoles. The standard edition for new consoles like the Sony Group (NYSE: SONY) Playstation 5 and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) XBOX Series X will retail for $69.99.

The cross-gen digital bundle retails for $79.99 and the 75th anniversary edition comes with a price point of $99.99.

The different pricing tiers and cover athletes could help boost sales of the game and also the overall revenue for the game with fans of the game and NBA/WNBA shelling out more for extra features.

TTWO Price Action: Take-Two shares are down 2% to $170.46 on Wednesday. The stock ius down 16% year-to-date.