On November 20, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar kicked off and will run until December 18. The cryptocurrency community actively participates in the event: platforms sponsor it, and cryptocurrency exchanges add new fan tokens of soccer teams and announce promotions related to the mundial.
Soccer hype
The championship is sponsored by Algorand Blockchain (ALGO), which will continue to help FIFA with developments related to digital assets after the event. The 2022 World Cup is also sponsored by crypto platform Crypto.com (CRO), whose users were able to attend matches and win official paraphernalia.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched a promotion for fans called Binance Football Fever 2022, allowing them to win rewards during the Championship by completing tasks.
The OKX platform launched the OKX Football Festival promotion on the occasion of the event, in which platform users can win participation in the NFT-airdrop.
Huobi raffled off tickets to the World Cup 2022 in October, Poloniex held the “Poloniex FIFA World Cup Carnival” with a prize pool of $100k.
Platform MEXC launched a referral program that could win $4.5k, and Gate.io runs the Gate.io World Cup NFT Collection, with a pool of $10k and other prizes.
At the same time, amid the sporting frenzy, many championship-themed tokens and NFT collections have popped up online with unclear tokenomics and unknown developers. If you want to join the digital celebration of soccer, it is worth carefully studying the history of the project and its financial component.
Soccer teams’ fan tokens
In September, in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, crypto exchanges MEXC, Gate and OKX added tokens for teams from Spain, Brazil, Argentina and Portugal. The first two coins were issued on the Bitci platform, while the second two support the Socios and Chiliz platforms.
Argentina – Argentine Football Association Fan Token (ARG)
Despite the fact that the championship has just begun, Lionel Messi’s team token has already seen a 24% drop in value after Argentina’s 1-2 loss to Saudi Arabia.
The result of the match was unexpected, as the Saudi team was considered the outsider in the group. The coin has recovered slightly since then, rising 4.2% to $5.61. Argentina’s next game will be on November 26, with Mexico as the opponent.
Brazil – Brazil National Football Team Fan Token (BFT)
The token exchange rate at the beginning of the championship was about $1, but it fell by 10% on November 23 and fluctuates around $0.69. The Latin American team will play their first match on November 24th against the Serbian team.
Spain – Spain National Football Team Fan Token (SNFT)
The first game of the Spanish team will be held on November 23. Opponent will be a team from Costa Rica. The rate of SNFT token before the match is at $0.35 and shows a daily decline of 2.2%.
Portugal – Portugal National Team Fan Token (POR)
The cryptocurrency POR is worth about $4.92 on November 23, its exchange rate increased by 2.9% during the day. The team will play their first match against their rivals from Ghana on November 24.
France – France Fan Token (FRA)
The first game of the French team was held on November 22. The French defeated the national team of Australia with a score of 4-1. The token of the national team FRA grew by 147% to $0.0013. The next game of the team will be on November 26, the opponent will be Denmark.
Changing the function of the tokens
Despite the fact that fan tokens were designed to address utilitarian issues and enable loyal fans to become more involved in the life of the team, today these coins are not being used in the way the developers intended.
The paradox is that originally aimed at purely technical functions, fan tokens have become instead a kind of analog of “shares” for clubs.
The price of most of these tokens turned out to be tied not to the value of their functions for the fan, but to the success and public reputation of the club, the expert explained. According to him, in this regard, the fan token market has turned into a sweepstakes, already compromised by the ability to manipulate the price regardless of the teams’ actual successes.
Investments
When considering the investment component of this segment, the platforms and blockchains that host such tokens look more interesting than the fan tokens themselves. He noted that, for example, buying a Chiliz notional token (CHZ) looks more strategically astute than buying a coin from some promising sports club.
CHZ cryptocurrency was released back in the fall of 2018 on the Ethereum network as a management token for the fan-token ecosystem being created, and a year later a side-chain (Chiliz Chain) of the Ethereum network was created to reduce commissions, the analyst said. He explained that the project brought most of the fan community together under the umbrella of Socios.com.
