chepicap.com
The collection of teams held by crypto and blockchain based project Chiliz has just added quite a serious member to their list. The centenary West Ham United will join forces from Stratford with such other gems of European football as Pars Saint-Germain and Juventus in displaying the possibilities of cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the field of fan engagement and vote tokenization.
The London-based club is the first (and apparently, not the last) Premier League club to be announced by Socios.com, a first-of-its-kind blockchain mobile app for sports fans, joining the likes of European clubs Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus, to offer fan tokens to their supporters. In the case of West Ham it will be available to supporters at the start of the 2019/2020 season.
With more than 40 million supporters worldwide and a global, digital fan base that exceeds 5 million across social media platforms, according to their own reports, Socios.com adds a most charismatic and renowned team with West Ham United, offering its global fan base the chance to aquire these tokens through a process labelled as a Fan Token Offering. The launch has the potential to evolve the club’s global fan engagement strategy and audience, bringing closer its supporters in the UK and abroad.
Fan tokens are a finite, digital asset that provide the holder a voting right. The clubs partnering with Socios will seek the input and opinion of fans by running polls on the mobile app, with the tokens offering the opportunity to vote and share their voice. These tokens will also give fans access to rewards, exclusive merchandise, games, leaderboards and other experiences as well.
The club-branded tokens are to be utilised on Socios.com but operate on a separate permissioned side chain, where each club will become a node with Proof Of Authority (POA). The platform is fueled by Chiliz’ native cryptocurrency $CHZ, an ERC20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain. Fans will have to acquire $CHZ through a cryptocurrency exchange or directly on the app itself, to subsequently buy fan tokens through the aforementioned Fan Token Offering. These fan tokens will tradeable between peers on the Socios.com app and the value will be based on market demand. A Binance listing later down the road is not completely out of the picture, considering news from early June of 2018 regarding an investment from the exchange led by Changpeng Zhao on Chilliz.
With clubs’ fans being increasingly global, the oportunity to create a new digital link with them seems like a potential use case of blockchain technology. In a recent CoinMarketCap survey, 46% of users said they would likely buy Fan Tokens from major sports teams.
Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO & Founder of Socios.com, valued the partnership as follows:
“We’re proud and excited to have West Ham United as our first announced Premier League partner. West Ham United is a digital-first club, and one that can really maximise the potential of Socios.com’s blockchain technology to build a higher level of fan engagement. We’re building a strong eco-system of top-tier clubs from the best and most exciting leagues across the world and are very excited to partner with our first Premier League club, to drive the adoption of blockchain within football and mainstream sport. Working with West Ham United is a big step in realising our goal of building the world’s biggest global football community and marketplace for football fans on blockchain, alongside demonstrating that our platform and cryptocurrency is the trusted technology of the mainstream sports fan. We will be announcing more European partners very soon, with more Premier League clubs set to follow West Ham’s lead in creating the best-in-class fan engagement.”
On the other side of the deal, Karim Virani, Digital & Commercial Director of West Ham United said this:
“Our fans are what make West Ham United a unique and special club and we’re excited to partner with Socios.com to give fans a new way to engage with the club. We recognise that many fans are now digital users first, with many looking at and using new technologies in their day to day lives. As a result, West Ham United’s presence on Socios.com’s state of the art platform will further give us the ability to interact and get direct feedback in real-time from our global fanbase, which will be important to our future fan engagement strategy. We’re very excited about the possibilities Socios.com offers us to give fans the best experience possible, whether they live within a mile of the stadium or thousands of miles away.”