Fans spend millions on club crypto tokens In Football
Soccer clubs could potentially make hundreds of millions of pounds selling controversial crypto "fan tokens."
An analysis by News estimates more than £262 million ($350 million) was spent on virtual currencies. Some tokens are sold so that they offer real benefits to buyers.
However, critics say the benefits are small - there is an opportunity to choose the song played in the stadium - and the club lacks adequate protection for fans. So far, 24 different clubs across Europe's five major leagues have issued or are considering tokens for fans, including eight Premier League teams.
Most fan token clubs have registered with Socios, which regulates the initial sale and subsequent trading of virtual coins – but other platforms, including Binance also Bitci, are also expanding.
Listen to Tech Tent: The Unstoppable Rise of Crypto Products in Football on World Service at 9 am GMT or Sounds shortly after that. Socios told News he had sold $270 million to $300 million in coins through his app. How much money goes directly to the club is not stated.
Buyers must first convert their money into Chiliz's cryptocurrency.
A study by crypto analyst Protos shows that many buyers speculatively trade their tokens like any other cryptocurrency to make money. Asked every Premier League team and some of Europe's big teams for their plans and views on new trends.
A Brighton and Hove Albion spokesperson said: "We have not sold this product, and we have no plans to enter this market." A 12-year-old boy earns 290,000 pounds doing NFT with a whale. Since cryptocurrency products are based on a public ledger known as the blockchain, Protos can identify:
The tickets of the two clubs, Inter Milan and Turkish Trabzonspor, have been increasing faster than Bitcoin over the past year "Fan tokens are traded more actively than you'd expect for this type of fan engagement product," said David Canalis, Proto's news director.
"Speculators know this, so I would think that most of the trading in the token fan market is simply driven by speculators looking for short-term gains."