The creation of fan tokens, a kind of digital currency, and NFTs, a type of unique certificate for a collectible item, was the main bet of the so -called Web3 – considering the new phase of internet development – for sport. The promise was to decentralize the relationship with the fan, democratize decisions and create new experiences, and, of course, generate recipes for clubs.
In practice, however, after the boom between 2021 and 2022-in which restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic motivated fans to seek new forms of interaction in sport-both technologies faced a sharp drop in value, use as speculation assets, loss of credibility and questioning about their utilities.
Trying to reverse industry wear, developers and platforms gathered in Paris over three days last week to discuss the future of Web3 in football and submit reinvention proposals for digital assets.
The event, named Hacking Paris, took place at Parc des Princes, Paris Saint-Germain’s house, which has sought new ways to stand out in this market.
Last year, the French team became the first blockchain validating club, in partnership with Chiliz, which operates the Chiliz Chain – Fan Tokens Platform of over 70 clubs, including Barcelona, Flamengo and Corinthians. With this, PSG has confirmed transactions on the database network, such as sales of NFTs and fan tokens. In May this year, the club also incorporated Bitcoin into its financial reserves, something rare in football.
For Max Rabinovitch, CSO (Chief Strategy Office) from Chiliz, technology still has potential, but needs to evolve to regain fans’ confidence and ensure true engagement. “The challenge is to provide significant digital experiences, especially for remote fans, such as those located far from the team base, as it was during the pandemic,” the executive told the executive Sheet.
Despite cultural and geographical differences between clubs, Rabinovitch points out that the usefulness of digital assets is in rewarding fans with what everyone wants, such as tickets, shirts and unique experiences. “Clubs may be different, but if you ask any fan what they want, they will say the same thing.”
The executive acknowledges that, in recent years, tokens have been seen above all as speculative assets, something they consider normal, as they “operate in the free market and are therefore transferable.” He ponders, however, that “the sports market is moved by feeling” and “expects the user to connect more to the performance of his team, because this is the highest value of fan tokens.”
At the event organized by Rabinovitch in Paris, developers of nine countries, including Brazil, participated in a kind of competition with the goal of creating platforms capable of engaging fans with new features for their tokens and NFTs.
Each group sought different forms of inspiration, but all faced a common difficulty, with the lack of involvement of clubs to express their needs. This forced competitors to first identify football market problems that could be resolved with their technologies and then seek solutions.
To circumvent this problem, friends Kathelyn Martins da Silva, 20, Davi Abreu da Silveira, 19, and Victor Garcia dos, 18, decided to work with a proposal aimed at organized fans. Their project aimed to create a virtual space where fans could show their engagement with clubs and, from interactions, gain rewards within the platform.
“During the project, we talked to representatives of eight organized fans and we identified a difficulty in organizing communities in online spaces,” explained Kathelyn Martins. “So our proposal came from creating a hub [espaço digital] For fans, where fans can engage and also be rewarded. “
“It’s like a way of being able to return a little to the fan all the fans he does for the club,” David added.
Bruna Uchôa, Bruna Vidigal and Filipe Saraiva also sought an alternative path. They have created a sport -oriented social network, in which users, including professional and amateur athletes, can monetize their content by selling NFTs. The platform integrates gamification, competitions and other features to attract possible sponsors to users.
“Our idea is to try to solve the lack of sponsorship in the sport, connecting small content creators with sponsors of different size,” says Bruna. “The platform uses fan tokens precisely to facilitate sponsorship and monetization.”
Bruna Vidigal, who is also a lawyer, points out that they were careful to add an artificial intelligence -based functionality to authenticate the posted content. “The platform can do a first verification, but also has warnings for users on copyright issues.”
The main prize of the event in Paris, $ 30,000 (R $ 167 thousand), went to a team formed by French developers. The project, named Fanscan, is a platform that transforms real items purchased by fans into digital assets, such as tokens, giving a second property to carriers, with which they can have access to rewards.
“All the projects we received presented innovative elements, especially those who bet on game tights that, along with the possibilities of tokens fans, are important components for user engagement,” said Bruno Pessoa, chiliz’s general director in Brazil.
In addition to seeking new alternatives for fan tokens, the executive has been working with other market professionals for the regulation of activity in Brazil. Currently, digital assets still operate without specific legislation, but can be framed in Law 14,478/22, which deals with cryptocurrencies.
Although the standard does not specifically deal with fan tokens and NFTs, it establishes rules for providing services with digital assets and indicates the Central Bank and the CVM (Securities Commission) as responsible for regulating and overseeing the sector.
