The identity objects of sports clubs have always been an element of bonding between the entities and its fans. Collecting these items includes pennants, flags, jerseys, autographs, photos, stickers, medals, books, postcards… The list is as long as the creativity of sports marketing. But as we have already mentioned, new technologies are revolutionizing the sports industry. And this desire for commitment and belonging among fans, players and clubs already has a virtual correlation: fan tokens.
These are crypto assets that combine the power of blockchain technology to ensure that each piece is unique, unreproducible and impossible to counterfeit with customer experience tools to fuel passion and gamification to stimulate participation through challenges and rewards based on concepts from the world of games.
Emotional benefits
Those who acquire a fan token can obtain exclusive benefits. Some are related to the old concepts of collecting: access to exclusive content, photos signed by the athletes or club skins that can be used in some video games. It also deploys virtual «eyes» that reach where the common people do not: training specials or locker room chats that can only be enjoyed by those who have the token.
Other proposals related to this innovation are aimed at increasing the participation and commitment of the person with the institution: participation in sweepstakes to access a meet and greet with some of the figures, the possibility of accessing a physical training session or even voice and vote for certain institutional events -generally minor issues-, such as the choice of a certain song for the team’s exit or a name for a new mascot, a change of name for a section of the stadium or the colors of the new substitute jersey.
Financial benefits
In addition to providing an emotional benefit to its holder, the fan token can also be considered an investment or an instrument of saving. While crypto assets continue to exhibit volatility and even abrupt changes in their prices, the buyer of a fan token has the possibility of selling it when it is at a good price.
In the long term, some of these crypto assets could increase their price precisely because of their value as a collector’s item: if it is related to a player who retires as a legend or to a successful era of the club, its value could increase as time goes by.
Clubs: major drivers
Sports clubs (including many Latin American ones) are the natural drivers of fan tokens, but not the only ones: some private companies are launching virtual sticker collections that follow the logic of traditional albums, only translated into NFTs (non-fungible token). Each piece has a unique blockchain associated with it, allowing users to trade or sell the ones they already got in order to complete their collection.
And, of course, other industries are experimenting with these strategies to nurture engagement and the bond between consumers and stars. These include music (exclusive concerts, access to preferential tickets) and fashion (direct contact with designers), to name a few.
Fan tokens constitute a synergistic passion that could surpass its component parts: the passion for cryptocurrencies and the passion for sports.