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by James · October 5, 2022

Gamification-based fan engagement startup LiveLike will begin offering crypto fan tokens to its sports industry partners through its new partnership with Chiliz, the parent company of Socio’s fan token platform. LiveLike has become the first company to receive a grant to join Chiliz Chain 2.0, the new blockchain ecosystem offered by the Malta-based company.

LiveLike has previously worked with teams and leagues such as the NBA, Golden State Warriors, NASCAR and La Liga, as well as broadcasters such as Madison Square Garden Networks, Fox Sports, Turner Sports, Canal+ and Sky Group. Trivia, polls, prediction games, watch parties and leaderboards are among the features LiveLike integrates into their partners’ apps. Fans earn points for engaging with the features, and now LiveLike can integrate Socio’s fan tokens to further support fan loyalty programs.

“We were going to theirs [Socios’s] partners independently and says LiveLike will provide you with an audience engagement platform to help you create community within your own and operated apps, it will help you engage your fans better, create loyalty programs,” LiveLike CEO Miheer Walavalkar told SportTechie .” The fan token is kind of the endpoint of what that journey would have been. So in this way we bring it together and go to partners together.”

Socios has created fan tokens for some of the world’s biggest football teams, including FC Barcelona, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Juventus, where token holders get exclusive access to rewards and personalized experiences. LiveLike’s partnership will enable the Socios fan token ecosystem to expand beyond the Socios app and directly into partner team apps.

“The big value point of a fan token in the future is not only going to be determined by the size of the Socios.com platform, but the whole ecosystem of how many different areas, apps, websites, retailers, outlets – you can connect to this one the digital membership, and obtain benefits from them?” said Max Rabinovitch, chief strategy officer at Socios.

Socios also has agreements with 27 NBA teams, 26 MLS clubs, 14 NFL teams and 13 NHL teams. However, the company’s US partnerships to date have mostly been tied to marketing and fan rewards programs that don’t yet involve fan tokens.

“[In the U.S.] it’s almost a very binary experience where it’s either a yes or no to team-level, league-level tokenization,” Rabinovitch said. “You can’t go piecemeal like we did in Europe, where you can go to Barcelona, you can go to just PSG. You don’t need to ask permission from their respective leagues to do anything with the team.”