Just last week, the news broke that Paris Saint-Germain, one of the most popular sports clubs in the world are launching their own cryptocurrency.
That was certainly a fantastic news for the sector due to the fact that PSG has millions upon millions of fans all around the globe. So I decided to write about it.
That post was titled Tokenization of the Web: The Game Has Already Started.
It was clear that the first shots were fired, and personally, I was certain that many more clubs would follow suit and that we were standing before a trend that was soon to emerge, and PSG was not an anomaly.
In fact, I ended that post with this sentence:
“My guess is, this is just the beginning and there will be many more partnerships between cryptocurrencies and all kinds of popular institutions.”.
Now, I have to confess that when I typed those words I was referring to the coming months/years and certainly not within merley a few days.
And that’s why I was so happily surprised when I found out that Juventus was launching their own token as well.
Much like PSG, La Vecchia Signora (The Old Lady, Juve’s nickname) is also one of the most popular sports club in the world, in fact their brand is even bigger now after signing Cristiano Ronaldo, the single most popular athlete in the world.
And also just like the French club, their signature token was launched with the goal to give their fans a voice, and reward the most engaged members of their audience.
Taking into consideration the vast magnitude of these two clubs’ audiences, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the positive impact this is going to have in terms of public adoption.
An important aspect to take into consideration is that these things do not happen from one day to the other, and these clubs were probably working on their cryptocurrency projects for a while. Just the legal part alone takes it fair share of time.
So it’s not like Juventus ‘felt jealous’ of PSG and immediately launched their own cryptocurrency, but they probably have been working on that for quite a bit as well.
Which begs the question: How many popular institutions are currently working on their blockchain projects behind closed doors?
In my latest post I pondered about that question precisely.
I did some research and I found out that PWC Global had recently launched a survey with 600 executives from big mainstream companies in order to assess the state of blockchain adoption at a large scale.
The results were fascinating as an impressive 84% revealed that they were already involved with blockchain technology, with 32% already at a development stage.
Things are currently being built as we speak and as the markets turn to green in the coming months, don’t be surprised to see more major enterprises start announcing their own tokens.
When that happens, it would seem as it happened from one day to another. Television would probably attach that to the hype or ‘the bubble’. Maybe part of it is true, but nothing really happens overnight.
Luckily, we have a great takeaway here because maybe we are already in a phase where a lot of major developments are already being built as we speak.
Let’s take these two new examples, once the FTOs (Fan Token Offerings) start being distributed, the dogma behind cryptocurrencies will start to evaporate little by little as we approach the tipping point when the common man start finally stops fearing a new idea as they start seeing everyone around them adopting it.
“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Maybe this will sound a little too adventurous, but I won’t be surprised if another major sports club would also announce their very own cryptocurrency soon.
If I had to bet, I’d say it will be Barcelona. I had my suspicions about that for a while since Rakuten (the club’s main sponsor) are not only launching their own cryptocurrency, but they are allocating 9 billion dollars in ‘loyalty program awards’ to attract more users and reward engagement.
They are also creating communities with moderators and administrators to reward participation around multiple niches.
Coincidently, the feature preview took place between Hiroshi Mikitani (Rakuten’s president) with personal friend and business partner Gerard Piqué who just happens to be Barcelona’s fourth Captain.
One thing is seems to be certain though, Fan Token Offerings is starting to gain some serious traction.
And this is just the beginning.
