Direct from the desk of disillusioned football fan, Dane Williams.
I was going to start this blog by saying that football’s ignorance is trashing the reputation of crypto.
But the more I mull over that statement, the more I think I have it the wrong way around.
Due to the game’s sheer ignorance around cryptocurrency and its willingness to scam fans out of their hard earned, it’s actually the reputation of football that is being trashed.
Having sent their last World Cup to Russia and now to Qatar, not to mention completely destroying the very emotional soul of the game with VAR, it’s not like the sport needs any more help in doing so.
Either way, it’s not hard to see why the mainstream hates crypto.
With the launch of football fan tokens and now whatever the fuck it is Barca are trying to do, I wanted to dig a bit deeper on the relationship between football and crypto.
Socios markets football fan tokens as “collectible digital assets that will create new experiences for supporters across the world and allow them to become part of a vibrant digital community.”
They’re essentially an expensive supporter club.
What football fan tokens DON’T offer, is any sort of true ownership or decision making ability within the club.
Token holders are able to “vote” on matters that the real ownership of the club is happy to pass down.
We’ve seen football clubs allow their fan token holders to vote on trivial things such as music in the stadium and social media content.
Woo.
So yep, basically nothing that couldn’t have been better done with an email list or classic membership database.
While the concept of football fan tokens offering you a VIP ticket into the inner workings of the club is cool, there is literally zero point to them being blockchain based.
When clubs keep 50% of the initial supply for themselves, and it’s built on VC-backed blockchain with a massive pre-mine, there is literally no point.
The price of football fan tokens don’t have any correlation to the business or on-field results of the club and are purely designed to scam money out of foreign fans.
That’s it.
After reading the announcement from FC Barcelona signalling the club’s ignorant intention to create their own cryptocurrency in order to help "survive financially", I can’t help but mash my palm into my face.
Firstly, they already have a football fan token called the FC Barcelona Fan Token (BAR) which runs on Socios.
The BAR token currently sits -88.7% from it's artificially pumped all time high, with absolutely no tokenomic design or use case with the potential to send it back.
But what FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta has indicated, is that this new cryptocurrency will be completely separate from the fan token.
"We're developing our own metaverse, [which is why] we rejected the chance to be associated with any cryptocurrency enterprises."
Drop a buzzword that you certainly don’t understand, old man.
Great work.
"We want to create our own cryptocurrency and we have to do that ourselves. We are different because we survive financially from what we can generate through the industry of sport.
So does he want to run an ICO to sell yet more imaginary shares in the club?
I thought that after 99% of recent projects failed or got fucked by regulators, we had moved past ICOs?
I guess not.
"We do not have big corporations or shareholders behind us. That forces us to be imaginative, innovative, brave and be a step ahead in many areas that surround the sports industry."
God I find it gross that Barca still speaks like they’re some bastion of social justice.
All I read here is the president saying that he’s completely okay with scamming their fans.
Especially the dopey foreign ones who are more likely to buy this trash than those at home.
the club hope to present their first range of NFTs soon
At least by selling officially licensed NFTs you can say they have some sort of collectable value.
Just do that, but be up front to the fans being gouged.
The bottom line is that football is using cryptocurrencies in completely the wrong way.
Instead of being used for governance, transparent ownership or truly fan funded business models, the top end of football is using crypto for useless shit designed to simply scam fans out of their wages.
There is so much potential for football and crypto, but none of what we currently see with fan tokens or Barca’s latest ICO scam currently comes close.
Avoid like the plague.
Best of probabilities to you.
