Cryptocurrency and Football: Another Giant Club Jumps to the Fan Token Bandwagon

English premier league football giant Manchester city joins a list of other soccer clubs such as Barcelona FC and PSG who are already using their own digital tokens. The club recently announced the launch of its own $CITY Fan Token. In this way, fan tokens seem to invade football.

Manchester further revealed that its tradable tokens would give their fans a VIP experience with the different fans engagement at the club. With the  $CITY Fan Token holders will have access to promotions and participate in vital polls within the club. Other club collectibles such as jerseys, boots, jackets and others would also be accessible via this new digital currency.

How private tokens is influencing football businesses

With the increase in the global value of cryptocurrencies, more applications of crypto are coming up. In the football world, cryptocurrency came into existence around late 2019 with a bunch of clubs launching their own fan tokens. Football clubs already use other traditional payment mediums to give fans access to the club's premium services.

Given the flexibility and low cost of cryptocurrency transactions, clubs are poised to earn more revenue using crypto than other traditional payment mediums. Dozens of multimillion-dollar transactions within the football industry have already been executed using cryptocurrencies.

The first-ever token was launched by an Italian giant Juventus in 2019, as per the report by CoinIdol, a world blockchain news outlet. After the outbreak of coronavirus, more clubs started exploring the potential of fan tokens as they needed a digital tool to interact with their supporters. 

Currently, there are about 20 football teams that have issued their own fan tokens using the Chillz platform. They include Barcelona, Roma, Paris Saint-Germain, Atlético de Madrid, Galatasaray and İstanbul Başakşehir. 

Cryptocurrency is invading other kinds of sports

Other kinds of sports are also exploring the potential of digital assets within the overall digitization trend. Earlier in March, US baseball stars, the Oakland Athletics Baseball Company, announced accepting Bitcoin as a payment for tickets during the 2021 season. 

Back in 2014, the Sacramento Kings basketball team became the first-ever club to accept Bitcoin payments. Later on, they were joined by other teams such as the Dallas Mavericks. In 2021, the latter went ahead and started accepting Dogecoin along with the flagship cryptocurrency.

However, digital currency has other use cases in sports as well. In 2018, a semi-professional Gibraltar football club started paying their players salaries in Bitcoin. While Arsenal performed the first-ever player purchasing transaction using cryptocurrency. 

Generally, it is anticipated that cryptocurrency might penetrate the sports industry even further. As all industries are becoming digitized, it is anticipated that solutions like fan tokens might become increasingly popular as they allow for a remote, virtual interaction.