Launching a Cryptocurrency by One of the World’s Wealthiest Football Clubs

French soccer|football|football game} giant Paris Saint-Germain football club (PSG) will launch its own cryptocurrency with a token providing  that aims to incentivize its supporters over a blockchain.

The development sees a new partnership between high French Ligue 1 club, Paris Saint Germain (PSG) and blockchain company Socios.com which is based in Malta. The partnership is based on the ‘socios’ idea that already exists between soccer fans of Real madrid and barcelona.

PSG plays in the highest tier of France’s football league and has been hailed as the country’s “most popular” team. The club is owned and bankrolled by a Qatar state investment company and holds the record for the highest transfer fee paid with the $263 million purchase of Brazilian soccer star Neymar from barcelona in 2017.

Socios describes itself as a digitized, tokenized kind of the “Socios” crowd-management concept of Real madrid & FC barcelona — “socios” means member or associate in Spanish. The platform is powered by a sports blockchain venture dubbed chiliZ, that has the backing of high profile crypto industry players that include crypto exchange Binance. chiliZ has raised $66 million in funding to date, according to sources.

Speaking exclusively to CCN, Chilliz chief executive officer Alex Dreyfus explained that the platform was looking forward to more collaboration with different top football clubs.

“We are focusing on onboarding the biggest clubs in Europe and in the coming weeks, we will announce other big clubs who will also be joining our platform. Outside of France, our priority is clubs in the UK, Italy, Spain and Germany.”

PSG’s partnership with the platform will allow the club to launch a Fan Token Offering (FTO) that provides fans access to branded Saint German club tokens which come with voting rights and can also confer vip status and/or rewards to their holders.

Fans will reportedly be able to vote on “cosmetic” choices (choosing the club’s jersey color, stadium music and logo) and certain sports aspects (MVP, Player of the Match or Month, friendlies matches, summer tours, charity line-ups, etc).

Dreyfus noted that the strategy represents a limited token mechanism, which doesn't tokenize the club’s existing corporate structure but is targeted on incentivizing and monetizing fan engagement and experiences via crypto. Marc Armstrong, Chief Partnership Officer of PS further elaborated:

“Paris Saint-Germain is decided to leverage the opportunities that cryptocurrency can offer. This revolutionary technology will have a vital impact on the club’s overall business strategy and the approach we engage with our fanbase”, he added.

Saint Germain fan tokens will reportedly be tradable on the socios.com marketplace, however only against the chiliZ native token ($CHZ). The club’s FTO will reportedly take place before the start of the coming football season, though the precise date and token valuation are yet to be revealed.

Dreyfus said that while PSG is the first high-profile club to join the initiative, the platform ultimately aims to engage “hundreds of millions” of football fans of multiple high caliber football clubs worldwide. Dreyfus said that the platform will facilitate engage and educate a serious demographic about blockchain and crypto.

Dreyfus may be a familiar figure in the Malta Blockchain scene having already brought a number of crypto companies to Malta including Binance. He's also involved in the Malta Blockchain field that's presently under construction in the burgeoning town of Sliema and which aims to gather crypto and blockchain companies under one roof.