New Beginnings
2019 feels like so long ago. Four calendar years have passed since the finale of Game of Thrones, the Notre Dame burning down and...the Juventus Fan Token (JUV) gracing the cryptosphere. A token that can help the average Joe Bloggs “influence decisions taken at the Juventus HQ in Turin”[1]. Surely not?
Some context is required. Fan Tokens are a type of cryptocurrency. Like most, the qualities and applications of this cryptocurrency are...dubious. These tokens purported to be something different for your average sports fan. A way to connect more deeply with the periphery of your chosen team, as long as you ponied up enough dosh. Was this project too good to be true?
Well, was it?
Yes and no. In a speculative sense, you were better off putting your money in Lehman Brothers’ stocks circa 2008. Look at the below graph [2]! Not exactly a great value proposition. The token hit an all-time high of $37.81 in December 2020 and has been in the doldrums since. Forget about pump and dump - this has been all dump no pump!
The price volatility means little to the hardcore Hodlers [3], admittedly. What about those juicy perks for investing in this project? If any of the below advantages grab your attention, grab some coins yourself. You can:
- Choose the official pennant for a match!
- Pick what the team bus looks like?
- Decide on the matchday playlist that is played in the stadium?!
And many more!
Could all of the above be decided with a Twitter poll? That’s not the point!
Aren’t these just NFTs?
These are (almost) Non-Fungible Tokens after all, just with added perks. Getting those perks is a bit more complicated than ‘buy internet coin’. Any fan vote, for stadium songs or bus graphics, is put to a poll. Crucially, the more $JUV tokens you have, the more your vote matters in said poll. There has to be SOME incentive for owning a bucketload of these. Are there fans out there who spent inordinate amounts of money for the chance to win a V.I.P club package...instead of buying the V.I.P package? I don’t want to answer that question.
The Old Lady’s Coin Purse
How did this come to be? Who came up with these gold doubloons? They’ve been around for less then a decade and yet a swathe of clubs are involved globally. Now, there are over 80 fan tokens on the Socios platform. All Fan Tokens combined have a market cap of $203,000,000 [4]. There’s even a Novara Calcio fan token[5]. They’re in Serie C, the third-tier football league in Italy. Anyone can buy a fan token for almost anything. Do clubs need it? Do fans WANT it? Is the concept of a fan token just a naked cash grab or the next level of fan engagement?
Closing Thoughts
Back in 2022, the owner of the app that created sport Fan Tokens, Alexander Dreyfus, had this to say[6]:
"We want to help sport clubs to monetise the passion of their supporters. We created Fan Tokens for that reason.”
26,000+[7] Juve fans have had their passion monetised this way. What happens if the team gets cold feet on the project? Regulators have already clamped down on misleading adverts for fan tokens in the past [8]. Further scrutiny of the industry could scare away big players, leaving the fans high and dry in the process. Whether that day of reckoning comes is another question.
The forerunner in the field, Socios.com, stresses that “$JUV is for life”[1]. It remains to be seen how long that life lasts.
For further reading on this topic, check out this in-depth look at the commodification of Fan Tokens: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10175924/
