Asia has one of the largest football following among all continents, with at least 800 million soccer fans. The continent also exhibits more than 32.5% of the total English Premier League viewership. With such a huge following, football yields more power and influence in Asia than many other sports, making it a perfect launchpad for different trends.
Like football, the crypto craze has been drawing more and more people over the years, and today there are now more than 56 million active crypto traders worldwide. It was only a matter of time before these two popular interests converged.
Crypto in sports
Sport-related crypto projects are still relatively new, but some crypto exchanges and communities like the Doge community have been engaged in sports much longer. The Doge community has been funding teams for years, starting with the Jamaican Bobsleigh team in 2013.
Basketball was one of the first sports to embrace crypto in the form of NBA NFTs (non-fungible tokens). The NBA has brought a lot of special moments to the blockchain with the NBA Top Shot that issues tokenized basketball clips with varying degrees of rarity. NBA Top Shot demonstrated the perfect synergy between NFTs, crypto tokens, and sports, and it was only a matter of time before the craze got to football, the most-watched sport in the world.
Entry of football into the crypto market
In football, clubs such as Lazio, Manchester City, Napoli, and more are coming up with fan tokens to raise funds to keep them afloat following the financially devastating effects of Covid-19 in the last few years.
Fan tokens have been well received by football fanatics who have already spent more than $350m on these virtual currencies. Most clubs adopting crypto are offering club-specific cryptocurrencies with perks that include features and shifts towards DAOs, involvement in stadium ambiance, and outlook or more.
Top crypto projects for football enthusiasts
The crypto craze has caught momentum in the football world in the last few years, and there are now several crypto projects for Asia’s large population of football fanatics to invest in. One of them is Sorare that focuses on improving how football fans experience fantasy football. The platform also allows fans to collect and trade digital cards.
Zilstars is also popular with football fans that are into collecting NFTs. The platform allows fans to own sleek NFTs featuring never before seen footage of their favorite players. Other projects like RealFevr also enable football fans to collect everlasting moments of their favorite players, from Christiano Ronaldo to Iker Casillas through NFTs. The best yet to come and the next big thing in the football crypto space is First Eleven (F11). The F11 digital marketplace is tailored to suit all football enthusiasts by allowing them to access the best NFTs of their favorite player and club.
F11 is a community of football lovers that offers access to tokens and NFTs and will allow fans to experience the best the football world has to offer. It will also cater to more traditional football fans’ needs by providing the latest football news, live scores, fixtures, and fantasy football.
NFTs in Football
Many football clubs are getting into the crypto industry by offering NFTs. European football clubs like Juventus and Manchester City have already issued NFTs. Some of these NFTs in the form of digital images and video have sold for thousands of dollars.
F11, one of the best crypto platforms for football enthusiasts yet to come, will have its NFT marketplace live by the end of January. Their NFTs have a varying rarity level (rare NFTs are always the most valuable) and will be curated by famous footballers. What’s more, the F11 NFTs will not be like others on different football crypto platforms. Each F11 NFT carries a different perk and is a blend of things like iconic player moments and footballer portraits.
Why should football lovers invest in F11?
Given the base that F11 has set, football lovers that get their NFTs will experience several additional benefits beyond selling and buying NFTs, such as staking and voting to earn. Fans can stake their tokens to earn fan tokens listed on the launchpad. The launchpad is designed to help football clubs develop their own NFT collections.
The F11 platform also allows football fans to support their favorite teams through pools that act as liquidity providers. Clubs can borrow from their fans using blockchain technology, making it easy to raise funds to finance their activities. Soccer fans investing in the platform will also help fund the F11 Foundation, which supports young footballers to achieve their dreams of becoming top-flight footballers. These are just a few of the benefits that football fans and investors will gain as part of the F11 team. Each NFT will be a unique piece that has been designed to have separate utility and form part of a private collection of unique digital NFTs.