Spanish football league La Liga will be entering Ethereum-based metaverse platform, Decentraland.
A La Liga-themed virtual space will host immersive experiences and activities for fans. Through this platform, La Liga will be able to bring fans across the world together and foster a wider sense of community. Furthermore, in light of financial pressures, La Liga needs to target a younger audience through new digital means to inspire loyalty and ensure the league’s longevity.
Many users’ first metaverse experience can feel like entering a ghost town with few other avatars around. That’s one of the reasons why sports teams and events are such a great metaverse application because people will congregate around game time. Serie A recently broadcast a game in the metaverse. Fans needed an NFT to enter the room and could interact with each other via virtual games.
This venture into Decentraland is in partnership with web3 sports company StadioPlus, which licensed La Liga’s intellectual property, and Vegas City, which owns land in Decentraland’s gaming district.
For La Liga, it’s a new source of revenue as it licensed its intellectual property for use in Decentraland. And for StadioPlus it potentially provides multiple revenue sources although it didn’t provide details. Given it’s in the Vegas City district, one has to guess there might be some gambling. But NFTs are also on the cards.
Football fans love to wear the jerseys of their favorite team. It’s a significant source of revenue, with European clubs earning more than $1 billion a year from football kit licenses, according to Sportcal and Vogue. That’s just the license fees, so the retail sales figure will be significantly higher. In the metaverse, those fans will be keen to buy a 3D version of the same jerseys as an NFT for their avatars.
“For LaLiga it is essential to continue innovating in ways to offer the best of the competition to our fans, both on and off the pitch,” said Stephen Ibbotson, Head of Franchises and Licensing at LaLiga.
Meanwhile, this is not La Liga’s first move into Web3 technology. Last year It signed a NFT deal with Sorare and it has a partnership with Dapper Labs to release NFT video moments. Thus, this entry into Decentraland is arguably a natural next step towards a more comprehensive use of the metaverse by La Liga.
Many football clubs and leagues have started to use Web3 technology as a means to bring fans together and open up new revenue streams to boost club income. Clubs like FC Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid, Liverpool, the German Bundesliga, and Italian league Serie A all have NFT deals or metaverse ventures of their own.
