Fan Tokens and More: What Crypto Offers to Football Fans
The reason for this is that the Crypto.com platform has become the Official Sponsor of the World Cup – the firm’s branding will appear all over the Qatar stadiums and in broadcasting. “We jumped at the opportunity to be the first brand to represent the crypto industry in this historic month-long event,” said Crypto.com CMO Steven Kalifowitz.
The contract amount is not disclosed – but we do know that crypto businesses poured millions of dollars into football over the last few years. Why did they do so, and how can regular users interact with football teams using cryptocurrency?
Football and Crypto: What’s the Mutual Benefit?
At least 17 of 20 English Premier clubs have signed a promotion contract with a crypto firm. Watford club players carry the logo of Dogecoin on their uniform as this crypto community sponsored the team. The OKX branding has appeared on arenas in Manchester, and the TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON 2021) is being sponsored by Binance.
One of the key psychological principles states: the more you trust someone, the more likely you are to follow their recommendation. This is why crypto firms invest in sports: fans are loyal to their favorite clubs, and there’s a good chance users will embrace digital coins promoted by their teams. This isn’t the case just for football: crypto firms have invested millions in Super Bowl ads, and the aforementioned Crypto.com paid $700M to rename the basketball Staples Center to Crypto.com Arena in 2021.
The basic rule of crypto-football integration is active engagement. The leaders in this niche are Socios.com and Binance Fan Token Platform: these enterprises partner with football clubs to issue Fan Tokens, digital assets that grant their holders numerous benefits. The perks vary from VIP tickets to participation in clubs’ governance.
Let’s take a closer look at the tokens that football fans can leverage.
Chiliz – a New Level of Fan Engagement
Until recently, watching games or buying merchandise were the only ways for fans to interact with their favorite sports teams. With the advent of crypto, fans got the opportunity to actively participate in sports brands’ lives.
Chiliz is an Ethereum-based platform that enables this kind of interaction. With CHZ coin, users can buy Fan Tokens of their favorite sports clubs at Socios.com, a crowd management platform built on top of Chiliz. Each team can customize the experiences that these tokens provide. This way, fans can:
- Take part in surveys and polls for sports club governance,
- Choose uniform designs and approve new stadium names,
- Vote on celebration songs,
- Help the club decide over the starting lineups and messages worn by captains on their armbands,
- Access exclusive meetings with sportsmen and club-related memorabilia.
This is an unprecedented level of fan engagement: users have never been able to influence their favorite sports clubs’ decisions that much. These incentives turn passive fans into active fans – by obtaining a stake in the club, fans get a sense of belonging and want to invest more time and money in it. This helps teams create new revenue streams and monetize their fanbase – it’s not hard to share some of the non-strategic decisions with the community, while the returns pay off.
Chiliz runs on Ethereum as an ERC20 token and on BSC in BEP20 format. You can buy CHZ on the official Chiliz.net platform or on ChangeNOW without registration and hidden fees.
How do Fan Tokens work?
Here are some facts about the Chiliz-driven sports tokens:
- Fan Tokens run on the Socios sidechain secured by the Proof of Authority consensus mechanism. This algorithm is considered less secure but is better suited for scalability and speed.
- Users receive new Fan Tokens during the Fan Token Offerings (FTOs) held by sports clubs. Each token has its customized tokenomics: the team defines the initial price, supply, and distribution rules.
- As the team plays in championships, part of Fan Tokens can be burned following each victory, which makes them more scarce and thus drives up their price.
Besides Fan Tokens, Chiliz plans to launch a collection of NFTs. The platform partners with Chainlink – a decentralized oracle service that provides smart contracts with live data feed. Together, the platforms will create a series of NFTs to commemorate sportsmen’s milestones and team victories.
Chiliz partners with some of the world’s most renowned sports organizations: UFC, the Golden State Warriors basketball team, and Formula1 (Aston Martin Cognizant team). But football clubs take a special position among Chiliz partnerships – the platform has issued fan tokens for Paris Saint-Germain FC, Manchester City, and FC Barcelona.
Nevertheless, three largest Fan Tokens by market cap were created by another project – Binance Fan Token Platform. These include Santos FC, S.S. Lazio, and FC Porto.
Santos FC Fan Token
SANTOS is the largest fan token among not only football-related, but all sports assets. It tops the list with a $53-million market cap (by a large margin from number two) and demonstrates $42 million of daily trading volume. Santos FC Fan Token ranks 335th among all cryptocurrencies in general.
But FC Santos is a record holder not only in terms of Fan Token market data. Since 1912, the club has raised such top football players as Neymar, Rodrygo, and Pelé – the latter is still considered the greatest footballer of all time. He played for Santos for the most part of his life and scored over 500 goals. The club has won the national Brasileirão league for 8 times and keeps the record of winning 24 titles in just 10 years.
Santos FC Fan Token was launched in November 2021 in partnership between the club and Binance Launchpool. The platform has become the sponsor and got the license to issue the club NFTs. For Binance, this partnership was the opportunity to attract new customers, and for Santos – a great way to raise fan engagement.
FC Santos Fan Token offers a number of privileges. Its owners can:
- Participate in voting sessions on Binance Fan Token Platform.
- Get access to Santos BC NFT, which can be used to receive fan rewards.
- Pay for match tickets, merchandise, and club membership through Binance Pay.
- Access private club events – meetings with the team, autograph sessions, and merchandise signing. The Fan Token also allows its holders to see the club’s life from the inside by visiting training sessions.
- Participate in gamified fan activities on Binance Fan Token Platform.
- Donate to the club and receive the “proof-of-loyalty badge” in return.
S.S. Lazio Fan Token
LAZIO is another Fan Token launched by Binance. A €30-million deal with the club is to last for two years with an option to extend it. As the S.S. Lazio President Claudio Lotito said, “_this partnership will allow us to extend our digital presence and connect with our fans and followers from all over the world like never before._”
S.S. Lazio is a Rome-based Italian football club with a rich history. It has won national championships multiple times, and also has had the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup and UEFA Super Cup.
LAZIO is the second-largest fan token: its market cap reaches $28 million, and the daily trading volume is above $8 million. Here’s what its owners can enjoy:
- Voting rights for club decisions – for instance, regarding the message on the captain’s armband.
- Unique club rewards.
- Exclusive access to the player area, rights to watch games in the VIP zone, discounts for the team merchandise.
S.S. Lazio and Binance are also planning to grant Fan Token holders with loyalty subscriptions, NFT collections, and fan shop integrations.
FC Porto Fan Token
PORTO is a Fan Token of FC Porto – the second-richest football club in Portugal famous for its huge fanbase. The token is ranking 3rd with $27 million of market cap and $18 million of trading volume. The team is a Portuguese Premier League member and has signed a multi-year contract with Binance to issue a Fan Token.
The opportunities that PORTO offers to its owners are similar to those of Santos and Lazio: users gain access to club NFTs, meet-and-greets and signed merchandise, can choose club anthems and donate tokens to the team.
At the time of writing, Binance Fan Token Platform offers one active voting poll for Porto: Token holders can choose the player of the month. Currently, Mehdi Taremi tops the leaderboard with 285 votes. The recently ended polls include choosing “where an FC Porto Athlete should surprise stadium and museum visitors” (users voted for “at the pitch” option) and “which sports practice session you will like to watch on @FCPortoSports Instagram stories” (basketball).
Bottom Line
You can purchase all mentioned tokens including Chiliz, Santos, Lazio, and Porto, on ChangeNOW without registration and hidden fees. We wish you a successful trading experience with Fan Tokens, and to all football lovers – have fun watching the FIFA World Cup!
