Socios to Sign More Main Kit Sponsor Deals?

Update: We have imagined how the kits of Bayern, Arsenal, Barcelona, and Chelsea would look with the Socios advertising. Of these teams, Arsenal and Barcelona already have regular sponsorship deals with Socios.

What If? 2021-22 Kits With Socios Sponsor

Italian giants Inter Milan have become the latest club to sign a deal with Chiliz, $CHZ (Socios), a blockchain provider for the global sports and entertainment industry. Will Socios sign further teams and main shirt sponsorship places?

Update: This article stated that the UFC Token was trading at a 95% loss from its initial €2 pricing. This was an error on our part as there was a mix-up with the Union Fair Coin token, which is also known as UFC. It appears that the actual Ultimate Fighting Championship Fan Token is not yet traded publicly as it was only launched in late June.

Socios Already Sponsors Dozens of Big Teams & Other Sports

Socios allows fans to "get closer to their club and, for example, vote for some things such as the design of the bus, or makes (social media) contests".

Earlier this week, Socios.com also added Arsenal to its portfolio. Their range of deals includes major football clubs Barcelona, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, AC Milan and Atlético Madrid as well as leading MMA brands Ultimate Fighting Championship plus some Formula 1 teams.

A report from SportBusiness suggests Socios can finance the deals by themselves and not by an investor.

According to Matthew Glendinning from SportBusiness, the brand’s marketing spend is not driven by investor capital, but by its profitability to date. They can afford sponsorships due to "highly profitable business" rather than investor money.

With Socios apparently having a profitable business, it seems well possible that they will sign further front-of-shirt sponsor deals.

Socios.com Cryptocurrency - Rip-Off Of Fans?

However, while the concept of Socios sounds great at first glance, there are some questions about whether it is just a big rip-off of club supporters.

The business model and possible problems for fans were highlighted by @uglygame on Twitter.

What Socios Is

• A cryptocurrency company that partners with sports clubs to issues Fan Tokens
• People (they don't have to be club fans) buy these tokens, giving access to votes on aspects of the club
• Barca, Juve, PSG, and others are signed up
• Each club issues tens or hundreds of millions of tokens
• To buy tokens, you have to use Socios's own cryptocurrency, Chiliz

Problems With Socios

• Socios makes "indefinite" money of Initial Token Sales - they do not say how much money they make from the initial token sales
• Charges fans for influence on their club
• Votes often on pointless issues
• Anyone can buy tokens - inc. fans of other clubs
• Not One member, one vote
• Uses cryptocurrency
• Prices subject to wild swings for non-football reasons
• Encourages financial speculation

In the end, it seems to be all about speculation and the recent hype about crypto has helped most coins tokens gain a fair bit of traction earlier this year. The Chiliz (CHZ) coin price is up more than 1100% since the start of the year, but down almost 75% from its all-time high on March 13th.

Chiliz has a revenue target of $150m (€127.2m) in 2021, of which half is shared with its affiliated sports organizations. Socios is also investing $50m in an expansion into the US.

It remains to be seen if Socios will sign further main sponsorship deals in the future but we would not be surprised to see them in the Premier League as well.

Do you think we will see Socios on the front of the kits of more football teams? Comment below.