Key facts:
Spaniards prefer digital cards for motor sports and tennis.
The more benefits linked by fan tokens, the more they attract the public.
Sports fans in Spain are adopting fan tokens of their favorite teams and digital collectibles of players and athletes at a fast pace. In fact, 34% of fans are familiar with the digital assets launched in the sports industry, and 10% of them are interested in acquiring some of these existing crypto assets in the Hispanic country.
Currently, motor sports fan tokens, including those launched by the McLaren, Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo teams; or tennis, like the Davis Cup, are the most popular among the Spanish. While the preference for non-fungible tokens (NFT) or digital collectibles is more marked by car racing and the NBA, according to a report published today by the firm Nielsen, dedicated to market analysis.
The Spanish sports fan population values fan tokens mainly because they give them the right to participate in the decision-making of their favorite club. “For example, Barcelona Fútbol Club supporters who own the BAR token were able to choose the design for a new mural that decorates one of the walls of the Barcelona locker room.”
Advertising
Fan tokens are also becoming more and more popular for the privileges they give fans, such as discounts on stadium tickets or the opportunity to meet the team’s players and coaches.
For their part, NFTs are valued by fans mainly because they allow them to have exclusive photos, trophies and memorabilia of sports stars, as well as their statistics in real time. To a lesser extent collectible tokens are appreciated because they can be used as avatars in game metaverses and other platforms.
Do fan tokens and NFTs have a future in the Spanish sports world?
For now, the adoption of crypto assets in sports is growing rapidly in Spain, but it still has challenges to overcome to guarantee its survival. To do this, the companies involved must “understand the evolution of the demand and the behavior of the fans, faster than their competitors, to guarantee an optimal offer that meets the demands of the fans”, as the report points out.
So far it is clear that one of the reasons why sports fans are more receptive to crypto assets is because they trust the brands that are launching them. These, in turn, are their favorite teams, with whom they have had a relationship for years.
81% of global consumers fully or partially trust brand sponsorships of sporting events, over recommendations from friends, family and websites. High visibility and consumer sentiment around sports sponsorships validates the dramatic increase in crypto asset investments. However, going forward, brands will need to transition their efforts from awareness to consideration.
Report «Tokenization in sport, Spain perspective», by the firm Nielsen.
In this sense, the document highlights that in order to guarantee the promising future that is already emerging for the sports brands that are being tokenized, they will have to solidify their value propositions. It also proposes that they evolve their relationships with fans through two-way conversations backed by education and trust-building.
As CriptoNoticias has previously reported, the purchase of tokens by fans exceeded USD 350 million last year, through the Socios.com platform, which claims to have 1.3 million users spread over more than 160 countries. of the world.
The most important soccer clubs and teams in the world have joined the fan tokens. Among these are the Spanish FC Barcelona, Atletico Madrid. In the last year, Valencia CF and other clubs such as LaLiga, Cádiz CF, Grupo Baskonia-Alavés and the Royal Spanish Football Federation, among others, have also joined.
However, there are also criticisms that point to this new market and an investigation by the company Protos, specialized in investments with cryptocurrencies, showed that soccer teams “reserve the vast majority of tokens, instead of selling them to fans, which distorts the market.
Among the data provided, it stands out that the value of the tokens held by the 13 main clubs together “exceeds USD 1,900 million, but individual buyers currently only have a value of 376 million dollars.”
Being low market cap tokens, they are highly volatile and speculators are aware of that. The Protos representative is convinced that “much of the trading in the fan token markets is exclusively driven by people looking for short-term gains.”