Serie A partners with German media platform OneFootball on NFTs – Sportico.com

by James · July 19, 2022

The NFT market had the year’s worst development in June. Despite these losses, the German-based soccer media platform has announced a global partnership with Italy’s top soccer league, Serie A, to bring licensed digital collectibles to fans worldwide. The value of the agreement has not been made public.

“We are creating an accessible experience for fans of Serie A,” Lucas von Cranach, OneFootball’s CEO and founder, said in a Zoom interview. “Our core business is Web2. We at OneFootball focus on centralized experiences. But I’m a true believer in Web3 because it opens up opportunities to decentralize those experiences and be in a position to own content.”

The deal – which begins in August, to coincide with the start of the upcoming Serie A season – includes the commercialization of NFTs from matches played in the Coppa Italia (Italy Cup) and Supercoppa Italiana (the Italian Super Cup, with the previous winners of Coppa Italia and Serie A). OneFootball has also acquired the rights to create NFTs based on iconic historical moments from the Serie A archive.

With over 530 million fans globally, Serie A is among the top five football leagues in the world. Currently, eight out of 20 Serie A clubs are owned by Americans: Atalanta BC (55% Bain Capital), ACF Fiorentina (Rocco Commisso), Genoa CFC (777 Partners), AC Milan (RedBird Capital), Parma Calcio 1913 (Krause Group) . ), AS Roma (Dan Friedkin), Spezia Calcio (Robert Platek) and Venezia FC (Duncan Niederauer). Another Serie A club, Bologna FC, is owned by Canadian investor Joey Saputo, who also owns FC Montreal.

Founded in 2008, OneFootball has over 100 million monthly active users worldwide. Members can watch matches from more than 150 clubs globally on a pay-per-view basis, and the platform also offers breaking news, highlight clips, live streaming of match statistics and live scores of hundreds of leagues and competitions worldwide.

The digital video moments are built on the Flow blockchain using Dapper Lab’s secure wallet, and will launch on OneFootball’s marketplace Aera. “But I also want to emphasize that we, as OneFootball, want … to be wallet agnostic, metaversagnostic, so that we give football fans the best product,” von Cranach said.

OneFootball’s shareholders include top football clubs such as Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid, Olympique de Marseille, Borussia Dortmund and Tottenham Hotspur, and the German Football Association.

OneFootball’s biggest competitor in the area is Sorare, one of the biggest NFT platforms for football. It has exclusive deals with France’s Ligue 1, LaLiga, Bundesliga, MLS and the Dutch Eredivisie, and with over 150 teams around the world. The French company has reported a monthly sales volume of over 80 million dollars.

According to Deloitte, global sports media NFTs will generate more than $2 billion in transactions in 2022, roughly double the figure for 2021. The forecast is that NFT sports collectibles will reach $92 billion by 2032.