PSG fanatics have helped Chiliz’s value explode this month, and many more world football clubs are soon to adopt the fan token model.
Chiliz, a digital token exchange that gives fans an innovative way to engage with their favorite soccer clubs, has seen its value skyrocket of late. Their growth is up over 1500% this month alone (!) thanks in large part to French champions Paris Saint-Germain advancing to the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League.
PSG fans may stand out among early adopters of these crypto-backed fan tokens, but their $PSG “currency” isn’t alone, as global titans FC Barcelona and Juventus are also along for the ride. Per Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus, the company’s blockchain had over 400,000 active wallets as of this week.
While bearers of these fan tokens are not entitled to an actual ownership stake in a team, they are granted a special kind of engagement. This includes access to certain exclusive club events, plus the ability to influence club decisions.
Placed up for vote on Socios, the website and app platform run by Chiliz, these decisions can range from club colors to stadium design choices to community initiatives. The more tokens a fan owns, the more votes they are able to cast.
Unlike NFT collectibles, which are non-fungible, each Chiliz fan token for a given team is fully fungible, much like a cryptocurrency token (or units of currency in general). For a given team’s tokens, each is identical to any other in terms of use and market value.
As of March 15th, Chiliz had experienced a 24-hour trading volume as high as $4.4 billion, helping raise the Chiliz token’s per-unit price to $0.6486. That’s proof of how advantageous it is for the company to see the world’s biggest soccer clubs succeed; after PSG’s advancement into the Champions League’s final eight, the $PSG Fan Token alone rose in value by more than 100%.
Chiliz is actively inking fan token deals with additional clubs around the world. Socios.com expects dozens of additional agreements in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, AC Milan, and Galatasaray are among those already in the fold and hoping to reproduce (or even exceed) PSG’s success.
Paris Saint-Germain learned in Friday’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinal draw that their next opponent is Bayern Munich, the winners of last year’s tournament. If and when Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, and Co. triumph against the German giants and move on to the semifinals, there may be no hotter digital token on earth than $PSG.
And their chief rivals will have even less of an excuse to avoid getting in on the action.
