By 2025 it has been estimated that the global sports market will reach $599.9billion. As COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns are easing, it has been estimated by 2030, it will reach $826 billion. Most of this is related to e-sports, ease of access, sponsorships as well as adopting Web 3 Metaverse technology.
Not only has technology helped in revenue and telecommunications, but it has also helped in athletic potential with a number of performance enhancement capabilities. Think of VAR in football, the third umpire in cricket, or any range of technology being used in lots of high-tech sports. The latest advent of the metaverse has given all sports teams, players, and clubs a new opportunity – as some suggest, a “billion-dollar opportunity.”
The Sporting Club of Bastia is a historic club of the French League created in 1905, winner, among others, of the French Cup and finalist of the UEFA Cup.
It is also the most popular club in Corsica, whose fervor and values of sharing and solidarity among fans make it a unique club. In addition, the club, which was taken over in 2017 by the Ferrandi and Luigi family, is committed to structuring and evolving the club in modernity, in particular through their new legal structure, unprecedented in France, the SCIC (a cooperative company of collective interest). This allows all the players in the club’s eco-system (supporters, sponsors, collectivities, etc.) to participate in the construction of the club.
“We are enthusiastic about this new adventure because we firmly believe in digital tools to bring us closer to our fans and offer them new experiences. The creation of a virtual stadium will allow all the fans of our Club around the world who are not lucky enough to live nearby, to participate much more actively in the life of the Club. This is definitely the future, and we are proud to lead the way.” – said Claude Ferrandi, President of SC Bastia.
The Metaverse has now expanded from live games to reward fans. Athletes and teams can now live stream to their fans through digital stadiums in the metaverse. Further, it has been estimated that the metaverse is expected to be an $8 trillion market and expects to be the next generation of social media. And over the next 15 years, it could be worth up to $30 trillion.
The pandemic has helped to highlight how technology has allowed people to remain connected even though they are physically apart. Sports clubs allowed fans to still interact through the Metaverse and even monetized it to replace the reduction of fans in stadiums.
The Atlanta Braves, a United States baseball team, with the use of metaverse, built an exact duplicate of their stadium to host digital events. Some other examples of such use of the metaverse include when Travis Scott hosted a concert within Fortnite and so much more.
Web3 has been looked upon as the future of the internet. Even though it is decentralized, it, at the end of the day, puts power into the hands of its users instead of big cooperation, and when it comes to sports, the fans hold power, not the owners of the clubs.
Now, European clubs are deeply looking at the Metaverse options, and Payfoot leads the market with its advanced technology and offers.
“We had very constructive discussions with the SC Bastia team right from the start. We were able to learn from each other to build an innovative digital strategy that should serve as an example for other clubs. We are reinventing the way to engage the fans and especially the young generation while providing a new source of revenue to the Club”, explains Hélie d’Hautefort, co-founder of Payfoot.
There are also certain new games that have come up which give fans the power they crave. This allows users to build the team to manage, fans directly own the players that they buy and manage, and this is done through purchasing NFTs. Since the game has direct ownership, not even the developers of the game can take these NFTs away. Users always have the choice to either simply trade or sell in-game NFTs on open markets and recoup their value.
This game, as the first blockchain-based soccer metaverse, gives its users access to manage their club and generate income while playing. In this game, every player or user can actively take part in different methods and earn rewards for their contributions to the ecosystem.
They can also earn an income by winning matches, selling off and lending out players, finishing at the top of the league, selling sports scouts, charging commissions, getting sponsorship contracts, betting, selling tickets to fans, and renting their stadium.
These users can perform their transactions in the game through the use of tokens which gives them the ability to participate in future decisions of the game. This is exactly what users or fans have been craving for a method to prove themselves and become more than just a spectator, they can now fully immerse themselves in their role within the metaverse.
Overall, the metaverse is expected to grow gradually and arrive in the reality of sports fans. There will be no exact separation before and after. Instead, it will continue to take over everyday life in certain areas with specific offers, products, as well as services, and also skills, first integrating into it and then merging with it completely. And it will finally come to a point in the metaverse, and with it, the new sports experience will not only be a reality but a matter of course.
About Payfoot
Payfoot is a registered trademark of Reserve Currency Solutions (RCS), founded by Hélie d’Hautefort and Thibault Verbiest. RCS has designed a blockchain infrastructure specifically dedicated to football, clubs, leagues, and fans, with a digital currency (PFT), an NFT marketplace, a wallet (C-Foot), and an augmented reality application (Payfoot AR). RCS has also developed the first football metaverse, with an integrated social network and 3D football games in the stadiums.
Payfoot is exclusively advised for the connection with professional sports clubs and institutions by Hat-Trick Management Group and its partners Ange-Mathieu Bonvarlet, Frank Hocquemiller, and Stéphane Dray, who have been leaders in sports management and marketing in France for several years; and by Licorne Gulf, a specialized advisory firm focusing on capital raising based out of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, London, and Geneva, founded by Alexandre Katrangi & Irina Duisimbekova. The company has 25 years of international experience with fundraising, M&A, development, and advisory for SMEs, Fortune 500 companies, and Family owned businesses. The platform will be marketed through Corsicom, the commercial and marketing subsidiary of Sporting Club de Bastia.
