Major Spanish football team, FC Barcelona, recently partnered with Chiliz, a blockchain-based sports and entertainment company, to offer fan tokens known as Barça Fan Tokens ($BAR).
With an estimated 300 million fans worldwide, the partnership between Chiliz and FC Barcelona could be massive for crypto adoption among the club’s fanbase.
FC Barcelona Launch Crypto Token
The Catalan giants announced the news of the partnership via a statement on its website on Thursday (February 13, 2019). According to the statement, the tokens will enable millions of Blaugrana faithful worldwide to take part in surveys and pools on Socios — the Chiliz mobile app.
Commenting on the recent partnership, Josep Pont, FC Barcelona Board Member and Head of Commercial Area, said:
“We are proud to welcome Socios.com to the Barça family as a new global partner. This agreement will give us the chance to set up innovative marketing and partnership activations with a clear focus on the digital realm to take the Club closer to our fans around the world.”
In a press release issued by Chiliz announcing the partnership, Alexandre Dreyfus the company’s CEO remarked that launching such a crypto token gives fans the power to make decisions concerning the club. According to Dreyfus:
“Adding FC Barcelona fans to the Socios.com global community takes us one step closer to our goal of mainstream adoption of blockchain. Every time a fan downloads the app, we are furthering education, and every time a fan buys a Fan Tokens, we are strengthening the use cases of this innovative technology.”
In addition to having the power to vote on various topics, Barca fans who engage with the club via Chiliz’s app will get rewarded with points that supporters can swap with merchandise and Barca unique experiences.
Fans can purchase the crypto tokens when the club’s Fan token offering (FTO) goes live. Furthermore, Barça supporters can only get the $BARs using $CHZ, Chiliz’s native token, which is available on different virtual currency exchanges. The duo is set to roll out 40 million $BARs in Q2 2020, with the crypto token costing €2 apiece.
Fan Tokens Becoming Popular Among Football Clubs
The Barcelona fan token increases the number of football clubs to create their own digital coins for their supporters via partnerships with Socios. Back in December 2019, Juventus Football Club in partnership with Socios.com, reportedly launched the world’s first fan token offering (FTO) to allow fans to choose the club’s goal celebration song.
The Turkish football club, Galatasaray, also joined the league of clubs to roll out its own fan token in collaboration with the blockchain sports engagement platform, Socios, to increase fan engagement.
Recently, Chiliz announced that thousands of its native token, $CHZ, along with tokens of top football clubs like Juventus, PSG, and A.S Roma, were available via a token hunt on the Socios.com platform.
Apart from fan tokens, crypto is also seeing some adoption in the sporting arena with English Premier League side Watford FC inking a sponsorship deal with Sportsbet.io to put the bitcoin logo on their jersey sleeves. In September 2019, Turkish professional football team Yeni Malatyaspor also signed a sponsorship deal with local crypto exchange platform BtcTurk.
As previously reported by Blockonomi, Heritage Sports Holdings (HSH) purchased Italian amateur football side Rimini FC, making payment in bitcoin. This event made the club the first footballing side bought using cryptocurrency.
Apart from football, there have been other crypto-sports collaborations with franchises like the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) among others.
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Source: https://blockonomi.com/barcelona-fc-fan-tokens-chiliz-platform/