Football trade embraces crypto as Messi helps ‘fan tokens’ take off

When Paris Saint-Germain signed Lionel Messi, the wage package deal included one thing beforehand remarkable for a participant—a one-off cost, understood to be value round a million euros ($1.15m), made in PSG ‘fan tokens’.

It was the results of a partnership signed by the French giants in 2018 with Socios.com which sees followers use a cryptocurrency referred to as ‘chiliz’ to purchase tokens permitting them to vote on points associated to the membership.

These points have tended to be slightly mundane, for instance Juventus asking what music they need to play of their stadium, however the idea has caught on.

The firm has grown rapidly since signing its first partnerships with PSG and Juventus to being concerned with 56 soccer golf equipment and round 100 sports teams worldwide, says CEO Alexandre Dreyfus.

Messi has introduced extra publicity, and Dreyfus believes the Argentinian will “set a trend”.

“This is more a top-up that is never going to replace any compensation. It is more like a bonus, but it is a bonus that at some point players will start to ask for,” Dreyfus tells AFP from his workplace in Malta.

“We hope that in two years, during the ‘mercato’ (transfer window), a player will say: ‘Yes I am going to that team but they had better give me a million dollars of fan tokens’.”

Dreyfus admits the pandemic and ensuing financial disaster has benefited his firm, permitting them to multiply their partnerships.

“The fact is that clubs suddenly lost 50 or 70 or 80 percent of their revenue, and they realised: ‘Hey, we have fans all over the world, what can we sell them?'”

They now have shirt sponsorship offers with Inter Milan and Valencia, selling their fan tokens.

Sponsorship bonanza

New evaluation by KPMG Football Benchmark exhibits that over 40 shirt sponsorship offers have been signed in Europe’s 5 largest leagues because the pandemic’s onset.

It says Inter doubled revenue by switching from Pirelli to Socios.com and a deal value $23.57 million.

There is a mini-revolution taking place as companies associated to cryptocurrency have began showing on shirts.

In July, Roma introduced a three-year deal value $14 million yearly that sees their shirts carry the title of DigitalBits, “an easy-to-use open-source blockchain used to power consumer digital assets”.

“Not only can fans witness history, but they can now own part of it,” boasted Roma. “Get ready to trade and collect. Join us as we step into the future of football.”

The emergence of crypto-related companies in soccer comes as nations are introducing regulation to clamp down on playing sponsorship -– a ban is in place in Spain, for instance, whereas the UK authorities is contemplating one.

“The door is ajar for new companies to stick their foot in,” say KPMG.

“Something has to fill the void and fan tokens, or something which is not defined as gambling but is gambling, are likely to be the big ticket in town,” Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in soccer finance at Liverpool University, tells AFP.

Concerns

There are issues about curious punters being drawn into utilizing crypto-related merchandise with out having a correct understanding.

To spotlight their volatility, the worth of ‘chiliz’—a much less well-known cryptocurrency than, say, Bitcoin—shot up 58 p.c within the 4 weeks after Messi’s arrival.

“Ultimately these are speculative products. Someone described them to me as gambling with a small G,” says Maguire.

Meanwhile, some supporter teams have criticised their golf equipment for embracing fan tokens.

Aston Villa Supporters Trust instructed Joe.co.uk their membership’s settlement with Socios.com was “wholly inappropriate” and questioned why fan engagement needs to be monetised.

Maguire says: “The golf equipment are concentrating on the ‘non-legacy followers’ and asking: ‘Can we make some cash out of those new followers?’

“If we take Manchester United, they claim to have 1.1 billion fans and in a normal year they will make around 600 million pounds ($805m) in revenue. So that works out as about 55 pence per fan per year. That’s pretty bad.”

For the golf equipment, that is the place Dreyfus—a founding father of French on-line playing and poker firm Winamax—is available in.

“We are talking about two different generations that are not fighting against each other, they just don’t see the same things,” he insists.

“I at all times joke saying we’re not concentrating on a man who has a tattoo and lives subsequent to the stadium.

“Our market is really more about the digital fans, casual fans all over the world that consume sports differently to you and me historically.”

© 2021 AFP