One of the largest sporting brands in the world is making a deal to dive deeper into crypto.
FC Barcelona, one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, is selling social token platform Socios.com a 24.5% stake in Barca Studios for $100 million.
“Barça Studios is leading the Club’s creation of NFTs [non-fungible tokens] and metaverse projects and spearheading FC Barcelona’s digital strategy to deliver projects that engage, reward, and build connections with its global fanbase. The new partnership will enhance the Club’s ability to deliver meaningful digital products to fans and build new long-term sustainable revenue streams.”
Socios.com began its business relationship with Barcelona in 2020 with the creation of the FC Barcelona Fan Token (BAR), which has so far sold over $39 million worth of tokens, according to the announcement.
Barcelona currently finds itself in over $1 billion worth of debt despite a busy offseason that saw them add several expensive superstars.
Followers of the club have been expecting FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta to make such a deal for months in order to comply with La Liga’s complicated financial fair play system.
Socios.com now partners with six La Liga teams in total, including Barcelona.
Fan engagement token Chiliz (CHZ) provides the infrastructure for Socios.com. Chiliz is a platform for tokenizing sports and esports in order to encourage fan engagement. The CHZ token is the exclusive currency on the Chiliz platform.
The token is used to pay for goods and services and to transfer value. It also enables users to participate in decision-making and various activities related to sports clubs and teams such as surveys and polls.
CHZ is reacting well to the news, up 14.3% over the last 24 hours.
BAR is up 17% on the day.
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