Major football clubs have made hundreds of millions of pounds by selling cryptocurrencies called “Fan Tokens”. According to the BBC News’ analysis, fans have spent more than £262m ($350m) on these fan tokens.
A few of the tokens are marketed as offering real-world benefits to the buyers. But critics claim these perks are meaningless and clubs have no adequate protection for supporters. For example one of these perks give the ability to vote for songs to be played in stadiums.
People are spending millions on football club fan tokens
There are so many fan tokens being offered by the various clubs in Europe, including eight Premier League teams. For example, Manchester City has its own NFT on the market. Socios has signed up most of the top UK clubs to their platform to sell their tokens, but other platforms are also growing in popularity too.
According to BBC News, Socios has sold $270m-300m worth of tokens. Some of the money goes directly to clubs, but Socios didn’t mention any figures. People need to exchange their money for Chiliz (the platform’s own cryptocurrency) to be able to buy fan tokens from Socios.
The research of Protos shows that a lot of people are buying and selling those fan tokens in order to make money. Though, many fan tokens have lost their value over time.
When reached by BBC News, a Brighton and Hove Albion spokesman commented on the situation: “We have not sold these products and have no plans to enter these markets.”
Protos found in its research that:
- Manchester City, Lazio, Porto, and Santos are the top five performing teams in terms of fan token sales.
- The most popular fan token was Lazio’s (generated up to $130M)
- Manchester City and Lazio tokens have dropped the most in value. (down %70)
- The value of the tokens of Inter Milan and Trabzonspor has increased more than Bitcoin over the past year.
The director of news at Protos told that: “Fan tokens are being traded more actively than you’d expect for this type of fan-engagement product. Generally, small crypto-currencies like these fan tokens can be incredibly volatile due to the small amount of people who want to trade them. Speculators know this, so I would consider much of the trade in fan-token markets to be powered purely by speculators seeking short-term profits.”
Some fans are also worried about the situation.
Sue Watson from West Ham United Supporters Trust told BBC that: “My knowledge of the crypto market is sketchy to say the least – and I’m probably representative of a large number of run-of-the-mill football supporters who are not traders on the crypto market. It’s not regulated, it’s not secure and I question what protection clubs have in place for their supporters.”
What is ROBOOTS NFT game?
The Socios app has a really similar design when compared with other crypto marketplaces with relevant graphics and statistics. According to Max Rabinovitch, from Socios, the system is designed to encourage fan retention rather than trading.
