In the midst of the current crypto boom, professional football club’s fan tokens have made some intense price movements – easily eclipsing what the sports betting arena considers an excellent return.
There has been a great deal of interest in the digital assets market coming from major mainstream players recently. Apart from the major banks, tech giants and the world of fine art, European football teams have been among the biggest names to make their entry. Juventus (JUV), Paris Saint Germain (PSG), Barcelona (BAR) and Atletico de Madrid have all come out with blockchain based fan tokens.
In most instances, these tokens give holders the ability to purchase hyper exclusive branded items that the teams won’t sell for cash. They also give token holders voting rights on certain club decisions. For example, JUV token holders have the right to vote on the design of the club’s travel bus. This business model feeds off of the fan’s passionate love of the sport and limited supply of tokens.
From an investor perspective, the results are positive. The dollar value of these Football club fan tokens have seen major gains over the past few months. At the time of writing, data from Coin Market Cap put the dollar value of Atletico de Madrid’s ATM token at 919.52% higher than its launch price. This is significantly higher than the 5% average annual return that is considered “excellent” in the realm of sports betting.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to keep in mind that cryptocurrency investing and sports betting (gambling) are two separate worlds – though they may share some similarities like, the inherent risk of losing your capital and that Both are done with the hope of future gains. However, the reality is that investment tends to happen over longer periods of time as opposed to gambling – which tends to happen in relatively short bursts.
That being said, thee purpose of this article is to serve as a simple comparison on the two ways through which football fans could make some gains off their love of the sport and the teams they support.
However, anyone looking to use these tokens as a form of speculative investment should remain very aware of the cryptocurrency market’s infamous volatility – Galatasaray’s fan token is an example of this.
Crunching the numbers
Going on the 5% average following an entire year/season of making well placed wagers on match results, the returns are only really enticing to the high risk kind of sports gambler. Over that span of time, a $1000 allocated to sports betting can never really amount to anything more than investing in one’s own leisure time. Not to mention the “calculation” that goes into every bet. While on the other hand, betting bigger could mean bigger losses.
When it comes to the fan tokens, they are a fresh product built on a relatively new technological innovation, so one should always be mindful of the hype element that goes with such things – think MySpace, it came and then it went. Things are always inclined to change as time goes on.
For now, football club fan tokens have proven themselves a worthy investment – posting triple-digit percentage gains in less than a season. At the time of writing, Junentus’ JUV token was up 715% since launch, while the dollar value of PSG token – no slouch either – had increased by roughly 574%.
Final Thoughts
Sports betting is not the same as investing, though both offer participants a fair share of thrills. However, one of the two clearly stands out – if your eye is on the money that is.
Further, there is also a noticeable difference in terms of the effort that one has to put in if they want to win. Sports getting requires a lot more effort than buying and hodling in the hope that hype and your favourite club’s performance boost your investment. So far, that latter has proven to be quite fruitful.
