Portuguese professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo has become the first player to be rewarded for his career achievements in the form of cryptocurrency, receiving 770 JUV tokens for his goal milestone.
He received the Fan Tokens ahead of Juventus’s Series A clash against Benevento last Sunday. The figure 770 marks the record-breaking number of career goals the 36-year-old has scored to date.
The connection between sports and cryptocurrency is continuing to grow, with players being bought and sold using cryptocurrency.
What Is $JUV?
JUV was launched in 2019 by the Italian Football Club as the official Juventus fan token on the Chiliz (CHZ) blockchain using the Socios.com platform.
These fan tokens enable supporters the chance to vote on club decisions, while also receiving perks, competitions and prizes, as well as augmented reality-enabled features.
There’s currently 24 clubs that are using crypto tokens in professional soccer, including Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and more. Manchester City is one of the latest clubs to join Socios with $CITY token.
Popular digital currency exchange and trading platform, Crypto.com is venturing into the non-fungible token (NFT) market.
The exchange announced on Tuesday that it’s launching a NFT marketplace, which will exclusively feature content from celebrities in different industries, including sports and music. Noteworthily, this follows the growing interest and boom in the NFT market.
Crypto.com Collaborates with Snoop Dogg, Aston Martin, and Others
The Crypto.com NFT marketplace is launching this Friday as an invite-only platform, per the announcement. It’s basically aimed at delivering unique and compelling content. Hence, the exchange partnered with celebrities in sports, athletics, music, and art for the inaugural contents on the soon-to-launch NFT marketplace.Â
The partners include Snoop Dogg, Aston Martin Cognizant Formula OneTM, Klarens Malluta with Lionel Richie, Axel Mansoor, Bag Raiders, BossLogic, and many others. The crypto exchange intends to collaborate with more mainstream artists in the coming weeks.
First F1 Team to Join the NFT Market
The partnership with Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team comes as they are planning to return to F1 racing after 60 years.
We’re excited to be the first Formula 1 team to offer a new way for our fans to own a piece of our history. The collection of NFTs we’re making available capture the very first moments of our return to F1 after more than six decades
Jefferson Slack, Managing Director at Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team.
Meanwhile, Crypto.com noted in the announcement that the NFT platform would be open to both users and non-users of the exchange. Among other things, the platform will allow collectors or the celebrities’ supporters to purchase or sell their NFTs using over 20 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Dogecoin (DOGE).
English Premier League leaders Manchester City officially announced partnership with Socios Fan Token App on Friday 19th March.
The Manchester City digital fan token is called $CITY and will allow supporters around the world access to VIP rewards, club promotions, games as well as augmented reality-enabled features.
The announcement follows other big soccer club names that have already joined such as Juventus ($JUV), Paris-saint Germain ($PSG) and Barcelona ($BAR).
The Socios App is powered by the Chiliz Token (CHZ) which has already mooned 7,000% in the past 3 months.
We are delighted to announce a multi-year global partnership with @socios to become the club’s official Fan Token partner.
“We are excited to launch the new Manchester City Fan Token, which will provide another opportunity for our fans all over the world to get even closer to the Club they love. Fans will have access to fantastic competitions and VIP experiences and be able to vote on Club initiatives.
Manchester City Blog Announcement
The Manchester City Fan Token is available to purchase via the Socios.com app. Registered Cityzens will receive an offer to claim their free token through a voucher code in due course.
Chiliz’s native token CHZ saw over 7,000 percent increase over the past 3 months, going from just US $0.012 to $0.87 between 13th December to 13th March 2021. It’s currently sitting at around $0.66.
The Chiliz token exchange platform powers the Sports Fan Tokens, which are digital assets that allow users to participate and vote in club polls, as well as provide access to VIP rewards, exclusive club and sponsor promotions.
This new sports token ecosystem could be a win-win for fans and clubs alike. With fans disconnected physically from their fandom, and this helps bridge that gap and engage more with their favourite sports. And for the clubs it’s essentially a new revenue stream.
Chiliz Token Exchange
Some facts:
Chiliz runs its own exchange. You can see the live token transactions on its blockchain explorer.
The Chiliz token ($CHZ) is both an ERC-20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain and a BEP-2 token on Binance Chain.
There are 8,888,888,888 $CHZ (8.8 Billion) tokens in total supply, with 5.5 Billion in circulation.
Binance has invested directly into the Chiliz project. This might explain why the sports club tokens such as PSG/BAR got listed on Binance so quickly.
The Chiliz blockchain relies on a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) side chain consensus mechanism for security (as opposed to PoW or PoS).
Socios App
Promoted as “the worlds first fan influence platform”, the Socios App is where you can buy the Official tokens of sports clubs that have partnered with them.
Socios Soccer Partnerships
The Socios app has some big names as Partners including the following Football (Soccer) teams.
It looks like a pretty amazing advertising opportunity for them, leveraging their brand, banners and TV coverage at sports events to promote their token.
Formula 1 – no official announcements yet, but they have started to pre-sell tokens via Locker Rooms. motorsport.com interview
Fan Token Offering Pre-Sale Partner Tokens via “Locker Rooms”
You can pre-buy your fan tokens through the Fan Token Offerings, although the term “locker rooms” might be a bit misleading to fans thinking they are actually getting to be in the locker room of their favourite sports people. That’s not the case. Instead, it’s basically a token pre-sale, opened before they have even sealed the deal with the sports clubs.
How the pre-sale works:
You buy the CHZ token and they lock it up for 120 days (giving you a 10% yield).
Should the potential partner club decide to launch on Socios.com, Locker One Tokens are transformed into official Fan Tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
Should the potential partner decide against launching a Fan Token, users who have purchased Locker One Tokens will receive a full refund of the $CHZ pledged to their Socios.com account once the 120 day window has elapsed or the Locker closes.
This provides the platform an indication of the demand for a sport/club while reserving the CHZ token (which in turn helps price support levels). It might also incentivise the company getting the deal over the line if they can demonstrate enough demand on the pre-sale of the potential Partner token.
$50 Million Investment to Expand Into the USA
“We head to the U.S. with a proven track record in generating millions of dollars of revenue for some of Europe’s biggest sporting organisations. In 2020, we shared more than $30 million with our partners, but this year we’re targeting a minimum of $60 million,” said Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus to Reuters.
There are rumours that the purpose of this investment is to venture into USA to form a partnership with the NFL. But that is yet to be seen.
Socios VISA Card
There are plans for Socios to launch a VISA card. You can apply for the waiting list. Perks include cashback in CHZ token and extra rewards when shopping at various sport shops.
Conclusions
The CHZ token has seen incredible gains over the past few months, but buying when FOMO peaks and price is at an all-time high usually doesn’t look like the best idea.
Personally, I think the token economy is coming, and this is just the start of it. At this pace, it seems pretty much everything will be tokenised soon.
