FC Barcelona, a well-known Spanish football club, is looking into the NFT marketplace. The club is no stranger to crypto gaming. Polkadot was approached as a potential shirt sponsor earlier this year. While Spotify finalized the contract with the club, the fact that major players like Polkadot (as well as Binance in this case) are in talks with the sport’s largest clubs is encouraging for a crypto engagement in general. FC Barcelona is now looking into new possibilities. Many blockchain-related opportunities are being investigated by Barca, including a “Barca metaverse,” NFTs, and even their own cryptocurrency.
Joan Laporta, the club’s president, claimed during the Mobile World Congress 2022 that the club would prefer to create its own cryptocurrency in order to “survive financially.” “We want to establish our own cryptocurrency, which we must accomplish ourselves.” We’re unique in that we rely on the revenue generated by the sports industry to make ends meet.” Unlike the majority of professional football clubs, Barcelona is owned and operated by its fans. Rather than shareholders, the club is governed by its 160,000 members. It was the most valuable football club in the world in 2021, according to Forbes. Laporta went on to say that the club has turned down digital currency firm requests for shirt organizations since they are still in the early stages of their metaverse launch.
This isn’t the first time FC Barcelona has dabbled in the NFT market. The club had previously negotiated an agreement with NFT marketplace Ownix, but withdrew after only a few weeks due to Ownix management’s ties to Moshe Hogeg, who was detained on suspicion of crypto-related fraud.
FC Barcelona was one of the first sports teams to develop a fan token with Chiliz before all of this.
Tokens are given to fans and offer them some modest benefits such as the ability to vote for the songs that will be played in the stadium or receive discounts on merchandise and ticket prices. Hundreds more football clubs from all over the world have followed suit. We want to see more initiatives to involve NFT in the football industry as the club pushes new boundaries.
