Hemant Singh, March 3, 2022
“FC Barcelona, the famed football club, is planning to develop its cryptocurrency after rejecting partnership offers from crypto giants like Binance and Polkadot. The announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress 2022 in Catalan by club president, Joan Laporta.
The move is being framed as a way to ensure that FC Barcelona can still compete with other clubs owned by wealthy foreign investors and corporations. Interestingly, there is already an existing Barcelona fan token, BAR, which stands as the third-largest fan token by market cap after those of PSG and Manchester City.
A key problem identified with tokens in the Socios ecosystem is a lack of token utility and functionality. By manufacturing their cryptocurrency, FC Barcelona may be able to bake in use cases such as voting rights, merchandise, and various other ways of engaging with the club.
Professional sport is just another industry that blockchain, cryptocurrency, and DLT are poised to revolutionize…” told the guy.eth, through his insider telegram
A part of FC Barcelona’s financial strategy is to develop a cryptocurrency to boost its finances. Its president, Joan Laporta, announced this at the Mobile World Congress held in Catalan in 2022.
The plan to defeat their financial problems
The token represents Barca’s attempt to secure funding and compete with clubs owned by foreign investors.
While the idea of a fan token is not new, Barca could become the first football club to have its cryptocurrency. But the club has no intention of stopping there; The President also suggested the possibility of developing his Metaverse and NFT.
Laporta explained that the club’s crypto ambitions were the reason for their rejection of funding from crypto companies.
This refers to Barcelona’s decision to reject funding offers from Polkadot and Binance. Instead, they chose to partner with the streaming giant, Spotify.
The market capitalization of crypto fan tokens is falling
The concept of a standalone token can be attractive to Barcelona, but various other teams across Europe have already created their own tokens in conjunction with blockchain networks. Available statistics indicate that fan tokens are the most general type of crypto adoption amongst sports groups today.
Different football clubs, Like Manchester City, Galatasary, Paris-Saint Germain, Juventus, Lazio, Galatasary, have created their fan tokens. BAR that’s already a token for Barcelona has a market cap of 29m dollars, having the crown of being the third most valued fan token. The remaining top two teams are Manchester &PSG, valued at $51 million and $38 million respectively. Both tokens are issued by Socios and are built on the Chiliz blockchain.
However, since last year, the overall market valuation for fan tokens has fallen and now stands at $354 million. This is down from a market cap of $417 million at the end of the previous year. The drop reflects the general performance of fan tokens, which typically see a large reduction in value after being listed. Although the reason for this is unknown, it’s likely that speculators, rather than actual sports lovers, dominate the market. Also, most fan tokens don’t come with any special benefits, making them unappealing to die-hard fans.
Holders of these tokens must enjoy perks like merchandising, prizes, voting rights, and other incentives that bond them to the club for them to attract fans and maintain the value.
Considering Barcelona is already familiar with the market, its new cryptocurrency might be an opportunity for better decision-making.
