Today Chiliz announced a partnership with the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to launch a blockchain fan token for the nation’s team on Socios.com as well as a rewards app. The Italian team is the current UEFA Euro 2020 champion.
A fan token is similar to a cryptocurrency as opposed to non-fungible tokens (NFT) because the fan tokens are not unique.
Socios has already launched fan tokens for many major soccer clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), Manchester City and FC Barcelona. Famously, part of Lionel Messi’s contract with PSG was paid using fan tokens.
According to Chiliz, Socios.com has generated more than $150 million in revenue this year from token sales.
Apart from benefiting from possible price gains (or drops), fan tokens enable access to voting, rewards, promotions and competitions.
The Italian federation will spend the money generated through the partnership on improving sports facilities around the country. Socios will also be the title sponsor for the Women’s Italian Cup for the next two years.
“This partnership will allow us to expand our relationship with our fans, providing new engagement opportunities and the chance for fans to be rewarded,” said the President of the FIGC Gabriele Gravina.
“It’s also another important step in continuing the development project of Italian football, because it will allow us to invest into new resources at a grassroots level. The partnership will allow us to support the development of youth football and the entire movement, from the base to the top of the pyramid.”
The national teams of Argentina and Portugal have also previously partnered with Socios.
While Socios initially focused on fan tokens for soccer, it has since diversified and now targets other sports and is also launching NFTs. It made a major push into the United States, landing deals with 24 NBA basketball teams, including the LA Lakers. However, the U.S. deals are for fan engagement rather than tokens because of the uncertainty about whether tokens are considered as securities in the United States.
Socios has dominated the fan token sector, but its success has now attracted competition from Turkey’s Bitci and the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
