One of the most popular Football teams in the La Liga Spanish football league, Atletico Madrid has partnered up with Socios.com blockchain development company in order to release a Fan token on a most likely the Ethereum blockchain.
Socios.com has been active in the sports industry for a while now trying to digitalize the activity for its fans. Their primary target so far has been just football, but they’re more than likely to branch out into different variations of sports as well.
What is the token about
Socios is currently operated by a sports blockchain venture by the mane of chiliZ, which currently holds a blockchain voting system for several football leagues as well as a crypto mobile application for the exchange of these fan tokens.
The best part about chiliZ’s involvement in this partnership is that they’re backed by large cryptocurrency companies such as Binance and OK Bitcoin Capital. This ensures that the fan token has a solid wall of liquidity behind it and therefore will not fail months after the launch.
The Socios team announced that they will distribute the fan token via a Fan Token Offering in the autumn of 2019, which means in a few weeks or maybe a month or so. It will cost 2 euros and will help fans purchase things like tickets to the games as well as team merchandise online.
Is crypto in sports a new thing?
Using cryptocurrencies in sports is definitely not a new thing it has been used in various other types, such as table tennis, tennis, etc. In most cases, these uses of cryptocurrencies were similar to how Socios wants to use it, a currency for the community around the sport, rather than just a security thing in which people can generate profits off-of.
However, there have also been tokens that were designed to generate players’ profit, in more detail, they were designed to be used as bets on several wagering games online.
For example, if we take a look at the Australian blackjack online, we see that parts of the “sport” are being financed through Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency out right now. Multiple professionals of both blackjack and poker like using this currency because it helps them avoid any issues due to their gaming habits.
This could also be the case with the fan token as fans have the opportunity to start using it for bets, and we all know how large sports are for the betting industry, especially Football in European leagues.
Is there a future for cryptos in sports?
Socios believes that a large majority of the sports community, around 1 billion people will be involved in their platform, from which they can receive the value of an on-platform currency that doesn’t require depositing or purchasing in most cases. It can be directly exchanged within the community to purchase things like team merchandise, exchange tickets to specific events, or simply tip people who offer things such as analysis, news, and overviews of dozens of games.
A similar strategy is being utilized for a more “modern” type of sports, called eSports, which is mostly about tournaments in video games.
The eSports community frequently uses cryptocurrencies to tip professionals, use the crypto for merchandise payments as well as betting activities online.
It may sound like an extra step to already available services, but in reality, it takes away quite a lot of processing time from the whole ordeal.
