The Sacramento Kings basketball team will become the first major professional sports franchise to accept bitcoin in return for its products, marking a symbolically important step in the virtual currency's bid to achieve mainstream acceptance.

"The way I saw it, bitcoin had reached a tipping point where it had crossed from being a curiosity to a becoming a legitimate form of doing commerce," said Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, explaining his decision to allow payments in the virtual currency. Mr. Ranadivé,...