23 Nov 2022
After Argentina's loss to Saudi Arabia in the World Cup, the value of its fan token dropped by 31%
The value of soccer fan tokens, created to encourage participation from spectators, appears to be affected by the results of games.
In line with the expectations of the country's ardent soccer supporters, Argentina's shocking 2-1 loss to Saudi Arabia in the FIFA World Cup opening match has caused the price of the Argentine Football Association Fan Token (ARG) to plummet.
Data from Coingecko shows that the ARG token, priced at $7.21 at kickoff, fell 31% to $4.96 by the game's end before climbing to $5.22 at the time of writing due to the Lionel Messi-led soccer team's poor performance.
The floor price of "The Saudis," a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT) with a Saudi Arabian theme and unrelated to the soccer team, soared by 52.6% from 0.196 Ether (ETH) to 0.3 ETH during the same period before falling to a price of 0.225 ETH, or about $250.
According to data from OpenSea, the collection's sales volume increased by 990% over the previous 24 hours and is now approaching 24.5 ETH.
Despite the pre-existing excitement for the FIFA World Cup, which began on November 20, cryptocurrency research firm Delphi Digital noted that Chiliz (CHZ), the native token of the fan engagement platform Socios, along with other soccer-related tokens representing participating nations, has also significantly cooled off over the past few days:
CHZ is a native ERC-20 token on Socios, a blockchain-powered fan engagement platform that has been a significant driver of the sports-fan token boom.
Socios, which has partnerships with some of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, such as Barcelona F.C., Paris Saint-Germain F.C., and Manchester City F.C., powers many soccer-related tokens.
Although the tokens don't represent ownership in teams, they give buyers access to some rewards and the ability to vote on some decisions by sponsoring teams.
Sports-related fan-based tokens have become increasingly popular recently, with token sales volumes frequently rising by more than 250% month-over-month since January 2022.
Despite not being intended for betting on the success of such teams, some people seem to have thought of the tokens in that way.
Other factors, such as the regular ups and downs of the cryptocurrency markets and breaking news stories, impact the tokens and the performance of soccer teams on the field.
As an illustration, consider how the recent FTX collapse caused the price of CHZ to drop by almost 40% following news of the exchange's liquidity problems and impending bankruptcy.
The first official blockchain-based sponsor of the FIFA World Cup, which will end on December 18, was the smart contract platform Algorand in May.
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