Introducing SoccerCoin — sports addressed blockchain ecosystem to revolutionize the sports business
Creating new recurring revenue streams for sports businesses using the blockchain
New times create new opportunities and using the blockchain represents the possibility for recovery in the sports industry, especially after the Covid19 crisis. To put it in numbers: The entire European football market decreased by 13% in the 2019/2020 season, with the most important 20 European clubs missing out more than $2 billion in revenues.
Furthermore, the absence of fans made the entire industry more dependent on the TV right revenues, increasing the importance of this income pillar by 18%. The ticketing and matchday income streams got close to zero, but the fan engagement has never disappeared: it just moved online.
Before addressing new ways of monetizing fan engagement, we need to clarify our vision. Sports is here to stay and it exists for the fans! It’s all about the need of sports businesses to generate new recurring revenue streams.
It’s our mission to provide support in this field. SoccerCoin is looking to unleash the potential of blockchain technology in the sports business. Our focus is to optimise fan engagement through a revolutionary blockchain-based sports infrastructure.
Advanced blockchain-based ecosystem to help sports businesses monetising fan engagement and membership tokenization.
SoccerCoin is designed to support sports businesses leveraging the engagement of their fans using the blockchain. In other words, our vision is to build the required infrastructure to enable the sports teams to create new types of recurring revenue streams.
To implement such a technology in the sports business has to be easy to use by both — the fans and the sports business itself, and its value has to be understood easily. There are a few major points that we have studied and analysed in the last years, and the entire ecosystem we are building is designed around it.
1. Collectibles are evolving and sports teams have to keep up
The world is a fast-paced environment and things evolve, as it currently happens with collectibles. Where the collectibles were physical items years ago, nowadays there are many other forms of collectibles and most of them moved to the digital world. For sports, this doesn’t mean the extinction of the old school collectibles. We all know collectors that thriving on a card or sticker, a t-shirt worn by their favourite sports person, tickets collections or any other sports related items.
The new trend means evolvement. New types of collectibles appeared: digital or hybrid ones (meaning that the owner of the digital one gets the physical item as well), videos or pictures representing various moments from the athlete’s life, or even real-life moments are the new types of collectibles that appeared.
Sports NFTs Launchpad
By using blockchain, SoccerCoin will allow any athlete or sports business to create their own digital collectibles known as NFTs, giving them the possibility to create new revenue streams by monetising the engagement in their fan base. Focused on usability, cross-chain and fan centred, our NFT feature will allow users to buy, collect, sell or trade their digital collectibles. Our vision is to tie up real-life items and moments with their digital equivalents.
2. Fan engagement is not fully accomplished
Fans are not simply customers and audiences — they will always thrive for more. Taking a decision in regards to their favourite sports club, having the possibility to involve directly in the life of their team, or having the possibility to meet their stars: all of these are making the difference between a customer and a fan. Obviously, this gives sports businesses and athletes the possibility to monetise their fan base through their engagement.
Fan tokens — The Real Revolution
Fan Tokens already exist in the blockchain space but, in our opinion the current form is lacking the central notion — the fans. A fan has not to be confused, assuming that a Fan Token is the equivalent of real-life financial security, where the fan owns the club, but it can’t lack all the benefits that can be brought by the membership tokenization.
Fan Tokens Platform
We at SoccerCoin will allow sports fans to be engaged and actively participate in the life of their sports team or their athletes. We will build an end-to-end Fan Tokens platform containing a launchpad, a trading environment but also an administrative module that will allow teams to communicate directly with their fan base through different activities. The entire environment will be fully controlled and operated by the sports team who will also be the owner of the Fan Token. We, SoccerCoin, will be responsible for the creation of the digital tools and the education tied up with using such new technologies.
3. The current ticketing market is broken
The problems of ticketing is something that everybody knows for years. Tickets are sold out in seconds, bought by bots for re-selling at very high prices, without bringing any royalty to the clubs. The list of challenges can be continued mentioning black markets, fake tickets and much more. The last year added an extra layer to the problem, as the access is now restricted to vaccinated or tested individuals.
Smart Ticketing System
Blockchain technology can move the ticketing industry into a new era and at SoccerCoin we are looking to implement it in the sports industry. Create, distribute and control everything that is connected to the ticketing of a sports event, by using a platform created for sports businesses, organizers and the fans. SoccerCoin will create a regulatory compliant primary and secondary marketplace infrastructure — available and easily accessible to be used by any sports business out there.
4. Sports belongs to the fans and they should have more power
4 billion people watch sports, even if we are talking about soccer, football, rugby, cricket, tennis or any other sport. Sports belong to fans, even if clubs are not owned by the fans themselves. Sometimes, as seen in the last two years, sports businesses having financial problems and this situation will not disappear short term. In some sports and specific places, there are already sports clubs owned by the fans, through what is called a socios organisation. Soccer (or football) as the most popular sport, is one of the examples, where worldwide known clubs are owned by their socios organization consisting of tens or hundreds of thousands members.
Security Token Issuing Platform for the sports industry
Hence, bringing power to the fans offers a huge possibility for the sports business to access liquidity when required. Building a new stadium, a new academy, investing for the future or even liquidating a part of the equity can be achieved through Security Tokens. This means a transition from one single owner to multiple owners and tokenizing any type of assets connected to sports. SoccerCoin is proposing a regulatory compliant STO platform that allows token issuance, investor onboarding and management, transfer agent services, all of them leveraged for the sports industry.
SoccerCoin proposes these features to allow sports clubs and athletes to access digital currencies and assets and monetise their fan base. We will focus on delivering an end-to-end ecosystem ready to be used in sports, allowing fast implementation and earings.
5. The digital currency for sports
The heart of the ecosystem will be the SoCo Token, a Utility Token built on Binance Smart Chain. SoCo is the digital currency that will allow access to the modules of the platform and will also represent the payment currency for the newly issued NFTs or Fan Tokens.
Our greater vision for SoCo is to become the payment currency used for payment of membership, ticketing, merchandise and other interactions within the sports industry. A closed environment based on a digital currency could represent another important revenue stream for any sports club. For enabling such monetisation possibilities, the infrastructure required for thousands of live transactions has to be sustained by blockchain technology, and we are already working on delivering such a ready-to-use framework.
Another feature we are planning for the token would be the redirection of loyalty fees to their beloved sports clubs. The also-known chargeback fees are already existing within the conversion of digital currencies with FIAT, and we plan the redistribution of these fees to the sports world. Basically, from any payment a user is doing with SoCo Tokens, a part of it gets redirected to their favourite club — easy and straightforward.
Who we are and why us?
We are sports fans ourselves. We are convinced that soccer or football, basketball, racing, tennis, basketball and all the other sports exist for the fans. At SoccerCoin, we began our project by closely studying the sports industry and especially its digital side, trying to understand how the industry can evolve. We studied soccer, but also other sports and also focused on how the pandemic affected sports because of the physical absence of fans in the venues, changing the sports as we all knew it. And for allowing sports businesses to recover, we are proposing now our SoccerCoin project.
We are working together with world-renowned athletes — our group of sports advisors include famous soccer legends which we will announce shortly, but also athletes from other areas of sports, like former F1 driver and current Indycar racer Romain Grosjean. Additionally, we are working with various sports clubs of all types, trying to collaborate for the best solutions possible. We want to create an ecosystem available and useful for all types of sports businesses — and no matter if we are speaking about a local team or an international brand, our focus is to enhance the relationship and bring more power to the fans.
SoccerCoin — The Revolution of sports business
SoccerCoin will unleash the potential of blockchain in the sports business. We want to revolutionise the sports industry by implementing the technology of the future and we seek to be the layer in between, allowing a smooth implementation. Sports belong to the fans — this is in what we believe as a vision and we would like you to join us on the way to our destination.
Sale details, tokenomics and the full roadmap are going to be released soon. For more information check our website: soccercoin.io and follow us on our Telegram channel.
