Supporters of the world’s wealthiest football club, Barcelona F.C. have been quick to adopt the new blockchain-based fan token (BAR) which was launched on the Socios.com tokenisation platform by fan engagement specialists Chiliz (CHZ).
With the initial pre-sale completing in less than 2 hours earlier this week, Chiliz community lead Joe Grech took to social media to highlight the beginning of open trading in the token that drove the price higher on considerable volume.
Demand for the initial $1.3 million pre-sale – that was 5x oversubscribed – was a worldwide affair with Chiliz reporting that BAR was distributed to contributors from 106 countries.
Initially sold at a fixed price of €2 per token, at the time of writing BAR is now trading at around €5.72.
Fan Engagement
Holders of the token will be able to vote on polls initiated in conjunction with the club which provides the chance to win digital and real-life rewards.
Rewards can include team memorabilia, meeting players, hospitality tickets and appearing at the iconic Camp Nou stadium via a video link on the LED boards surrounding the pitch.
As shown by statistics from LunarCrush, the release of BAR helped to drive social traffic towards Chiliz.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Socios.com, explained that a similar metric can be applied to the participating football club because “fan engagement” is a primary function of blockchain-based fan tokens.
Dreyfus explained that “For the biggest clubs in the world, 99.9% of sports fans are not actually in the stadiums, or even in the same city or country of the club that they are supporting…[which means]…there is a lack of engagement and monetisation towards this global fan base.”Â
According to Dreyfus, fan tokens give a voice to those distant fans that is recognised by the club.
Socios.com have established a track record of launching fan tokens with the likes of Juventus, Paris St-Germain, Atlético de Madrid, AS Roma, Galatasaray and CA Independiente already onboard with the initiative.
Upcoming developments to the platform are said to include the introduction of a leaderboard feature so users can compete to become the number 1 fan in their country.
Although the success with football clubs has been significant, Chiliz believe their fan-engagement process can be applied in multiple sectors and other partners currently include the UFC and esports teams. Earlier this year, Chiliz collaborated with blockchain gaming development platform Enjin (ENJ) to expand a range of Ethereum-based digital collectibles.
