President of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta revealed a future plan to integrate booming technological innovations such as crypto, NFTs, and metaverse to overcome the ongoing financial crisis in the club.
Barcelona became the first club to enter the NFT space. Now, it plans to build its own cryptocurrency and curate NFTs. Furthermore, he revealed that the club is developing its own metaverse.
Since last year, The club has been in big financial ‘turmoil’. The club’s financial instability forced it to end the contract with its star player and most expensive player of the club, Lionel Messi.
He is expecting that technological innovation can play a crucial role “in developing on the field and off the field.” The commitment to innovation is not only strategic but is an “almost survival issue for the Club,” explained Laporta.
FC Barcelona is a ‘More than a Club’ as it is totally ‘owned’ by members and fans, despite any corporate or a single billionaire.
To control the new space of NFTs and Metaverse, the club has already added some clauses in the player’s contract.
As the club holds a ‘Big Data’ of 300 million fan base, the president believes that addition of NFTs will help the club to overthrow financial turbulence as well as to increase engagement with their fans. In the last few months, the NFT trend embarked on milestones in many ways for celebrities, sportspeople and others.
Last year, FC Barcelona also gave hints of launching the NFT Collection through Ownix to improve the club’s connection to its global audience. Lionel Messi also launched its own NFT collection “Messiverse” with the help of Australia-based digital artist BossLogic.
“There is a new business world, and to compete in it we have to develop a large technology and research department, collaborate with start-up companies, universities, development centres, everything related to the world of innovation,” said the president of FC Barcelona.
