In Europe, on the other hand, we are witnessing a more prudent approach, guided by a sort of awe towards technological applications to sport: the purely European concept is that sport, as a "physical", must be governed purely with human control, without excessive technological applications. However, things are changing. Slowly, but steadily. Examples in the game of football are "goal line technology" or "var".
The blockchain itself is inexorably approaching the world of sports. In some cases we are witnessing real applications of the blockchain in the field, in others, however, we limit ourselves to studying projects that have not yet started, in the definition or construction phase.
On the other hand, what is evident is that big names in sport do not express fears in adopting this new technology, implementing it in their business under various aspects. Football, tennis, boxing, rowing ... Let's see some of them.
Names
Arsenal (English Premier League, football) signs a sponsorship contract with CashBet. With this step, Arsenal becomes the first football team to have attacked the cryptocurrency world, promoting the CashBet ICO.
Tokenization of athletes: Globaltalent is becoming an example of how an athlete or a team can finance themselves through cryptocurrency. Whoever buys the token of an athlete or a team, will be able to earn, in the future, on the goals they have achieved (it differs from a bet).
Avai Futebol Clube is a Brazilian Serie B club that has decided to "tokenize" itself in order to self-finance the construction of infrastructures with the aim of the Brazilian Serie A and Copa Libertadores, through a 20 million dollar ICO.
Paris Saint Germain (PSG, French top football league), Juventus and Roma (Italian Serie A, football), West Ham (English Premier League, football), Galatasaray (Turkish top league, football), Atletico Madrid (Spanish top league, football ) join the socios.com platform, for the tokenization of fans.
Manchester City (English Premier League, football) signs with the Superbloke platform (South Korea), a startup that will insert the team into its football game built on blockchain: the players will be "tokenizable" through the DAPP.
Watford F.C. (Premier League team owned by the Pozzo family, which owns Udinese Calcio in Serie A in Italy) enters into a sponsorship agreement with sportsbet.io (sports betting in bitcoin): the result of the agreement was the possibility for the team to wear the Bitcoin “B” logo on the shirt.
Russell Okung, NFL star of the LA Chargers, has exposed himself rather decisively to the blockchain world, becoming a sort of educator of the Bitcoin culture, speaking as a speaker at Bitcoin conferences such as the one on September 1, 2019 or exposing himself by promoting the payment of part of the players' salaries. NFL in Bitcoin.
Caroline Wozniacki, famous professional tennis player, has signed a contract with GCOX, Global Crypto Offering Exchange for 1 year. You are officially the first tennis player to have her own Token: sponsorship, merchandising, advanced interactions .. Will the next Roger Federer be tokenized? The same platform was joined by Jason Derulo (famous singer) and Michael Owen, English footballer, 2001 Ballon d'Or, as well as former boxer Manny Pacquiao.
Multiple titles and world champions of football such as Gianluca Zambrotta (Italian national team) and Lothar Matthaus (Italian national team) have joined blockchain projects such as tokenstars.com.
Lionel Messi (football legend, multiple titles and multiple golden ball) is the official ambassador of Sirin Labs, a company engaged in the construction of devices based on blockchain technology.
People of the caliber of Luis Suarez (star of Barcelona, ??football) and Floyd Mayweather (entrepreneur and former champion of Puglia) are involved in the company called "The blockchain prediction market platform" stox.com.
Mike Tyson (ex boxer of international fame) was one of the first sportsmen to firmly believe in the blockchain: already in July 2015 he entered the Bitcoin world, investing in Bitcoin Direct.
We certainly remember the Winklevoss twins: Cameron and Tyler. Rowing champions who took part in the 2008 Olympic Games (Beijing, 6th place in the “A2 without”) and in the Pan-American Games of 2007 (Rio de Janeiro, gold in the “8 with”, silver in the “4 without”). Becoming famous for the Facebook issue, they invested about 11 million dollars in Bitcoin in 2013, today their investment has exceeded one billion dollars. They founded Gemini a cryptocurrency exchange, pegged to the U.S. dollar. : the Gemini Dollar is carried on the Ethereum blockchain with ERC20 token.
Anyone could feel free to report further projects by personalities of international caliber: the web is full of them.
Blockchain development: some reflections
It was interesting to note how prominent personalities did not have any "awe" of this new technological ecosystem: the blockchain. Through a global research we have found projects of different nature, in existence or still in the test phase.
Blockchain technology is often seen almost as a chimera, difficult to apply to distinct situations, difficult to identify in the business targets it can pursue. On the contrary, it is curious to note how the technological and / or philosophical foundations of this technology were quickly taken, assimilated and adapted in numerous sports contexts specifically in this article.
If at first glance instinctive fears arise in some way reverential towards blockchain technology, it then turns out that in various areas of the globe there have been no qualms or fears or hesitations in starting test projects of this technology in the sports field; tests that often turned just as quickly into tangible projects.
In the research I went back in time, provocatively and with curiosity, just to see "how soon" these tests - projects were born in relation to the advent of the blockchain not only in the mainstream, but also and above all simply to the knowledge of everyone through the medium. Internet.
Here we have experienced first-hand how much more or less known sports figures have decided to believe so firmly in the potential of the blockchain to be supported by more or less interesting projects, involving various sports, which enhance one asset rather than another.
European, South American football, National Football League, tennis, boxing, football stars, former rowing champions and profitable investors, tennis stars, top club and junior football teams ... and the list goes on.
The projects involving these figures are among the most diverse:
“Smart” tickets.
Crypto sponsorships.
Tokenization of both known and unknown athletes.
Tokenization of fans.
Tokenization of sports individual performance data.
And so on.
Blockchain applications
Here it becomes interesting to highlight the reasons (or some of them) why the blockchain is able to have a positive impact on sport in general, looking for some numbers of the sport most followed and practiced at national and international level, especially at European level. : football.
Great difficulty on the part of the teams in finding new methods to improve and increase turnover: the big ones are increasingly big, the smaller ones are unable to emerge consistently.
There is strong research in inserting new technologies into a system that is in great need of innovation. UEFA itself pushes for introductions and tests of new technologies (example: VAR).
The football presidents of the past no longer exist: infinite pockets, continuous and uncontrolled team funding, often not "covered" by corresponding revenues. Financial Fair Play is now law. Financial accounts today must comply with certain parameters. Here we could open an entire chapter on the effectiveness of financial fair play: does it really work? Can it be improved? Could the blockchain give it a further development step?
Difficulty interacting in a tangible and fruitful way with fans far from the place of origin of the team in question, especially if they are in another country or continent. What could happen if the blockchain could create a smartphone app-style ecosystem and put new forms of interaction with their team into the hands of fans, even live during a match? How much could such a system be monetized by sponsors? And from the team? What if even users could benefit from it thanks to smart contracts and specific tokens that reward interaction? These are just some of the implementations that can be activated through this technology.
We often see problems in the management of fans, both inside the stadium and externally, such as scalping. How much could the team gain in being able to manage user data in the stadium area, GDPR Compliant? Accesses, tickets, tokenizations of various kinds .. How much would the sponsors pay to have the opportunity to interact with this amount of data and users?
In the next article we will try to analyze the most salient aspects in which the blockchain can be used as a tangibly useful and applicable tool to sport, by examining real numbers and data.
