FC Barcelona, one of the most successful football clubs in the world with a massive fanbase in Spain and Europe, has announced its plans to join the metaverse via the cryptocurrency market.
The club’s president, Joan Laporta, explains how the Spanish giants aim to take advantage of these markets and bring engagement from its fans across the globe.
Laporta stated, “In recent times there has been a lot of attention to blockchain products and services such as NFTs and metaverse. We should be able to offer digital products to our members and fans that will align with the value of the club and generate a very interesting emotional experience.”
FC Barcelona remains one of the most influential football clubs in the world and it is currently exploring growth options as it expands to new business areas such as NFTs and the metaverse.
The expansion was obviously inspired by the recent surge of metaverse talks and seeing how other football clubs such as Real Madrid CF, a fierce rival to FC Barcelona has also shown interests in the metaverse after adding AR viewing option to its In-house streaming service. Seems that Barcelona does not wish to miss out and arrive late to the party.
Crypto Barcelona Bucks?
FC Barcelona’s main objective of joining the metaverse is to increase engagement of the club and generate revenue from fans across the globe. Laporta also hinted at the possibility launching a cryptocurrency that’s issued by the club itself, rather than using fan tokens that are already available and are issued in partnership with Socios, a fan engagement platform.
The LaLiga gaints are currently building infrastructure that’ll support its new path after the launch of Barca Studios. This will be the centre of production for all audiovisual offers of the team as well as the Barca Innovation Hub that’ll introduce new tech to the team’s workflow.
Laporta reinstated that the club remains focused on expanding to offer new products and services that are linked to new technologies with the aim of staying relevant. “We want to generate new opportunities for growth. Our goal is to win titles and to make our fans happy, but we also have to profit from opportunities in the sports industry. It is a matter of survival,” he stated.
The president also mentioned that the club is already studying to launch its first NFT drop soon, but no further details were revealed.
The possibilities arising from the metaverse continue to entice major soccer clubs in Europe. Recently Manchester City outlined their plans for a virtual stadium hosting matches alongside unique merchandise and celebrity appearances.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
