In or­der for sports to con­tin­ue to ex­ist, there must be two things: peo­ple who prac­tice it and en­thu­si­asts who fol­low it.

Teams and As­so­ci­a­tions, there­fore, have every in­ter­est in stim­u­lat­ing the en­gage­ment of fans, cre­at­ing a sense of be­long­ing and loy­al­ty to strength­en the re­la­tion­ship with fans/cus­tomers/stake­hold­ers and ob­tain a con­crete re­turn from a long-term busi­ness per­spec­tive.

In re­cent years we have wit­nessed a great change in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween so­ci­ety and fans. New tech­nolo­gies for the use of sport­ing events have be­come in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant, and the re­cent pan­dem­ic years have giv­en a fur­ther boost to this phe­nom­e­non.

Blockchain tech­nol­o­gy has seen re­mark­able de­vel­op­ment in re­cent years. From the first du­bi­ous ap­proach­es, to­day the pub­lic and busi­ness­es have learned to know and ap­pre­ci­ate it. The us­es of this tech­nol­o­gy are grow­ing, and its po­ten­tial is not yet ful­ly ex­pressed.

In the sports field, the use of blockchain for pub­lic en­gage­ment is linked to a sub-branch of this tech­nol­o­gy: NFTs. These are dig­i­tal "ob­jects" that - pur­chased on the blockchain - are unique and there­fore not copy­able. For this rea­son, they are sold by com­pa­nies as col­lec­tables, stim­u­lat­ing the in­volve­ment of fans.

Take the case of the NBA Top Shot. This pas­sion­ate ini­tia­tive is based on a blockchain plat­form, where users can buy, sell, and ex­change “mo­ments”, or NFTs in the form of of­fi­cial video high­lights of the best NBA games.

NFTs are now gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in foot­ball. NFT stands for "non-fun­gi­ble to­ken", which means a unique dig­i­tal col­lec­table that is tracked on a blockchain to prove its one-of-a-kind au­then­tic­i­ty.

One can think of NFTs as sim­i­lar to re­al-life col­lec­tables like trad­ing cards or vinyl records in that they each have their own qual­i­ties. They can­not be re­placed by the ex­act same spec­i­men - or in the case of NFTs, the ex­act same un­der­ly­ing da­ta - thus mak­ing them "non-fun­gi­ble".

For the al­ready wealthy, buy­ing NFTs seems to be a straight­for­ward and suc­cess­ful in­vest­ment, es­pe­cial­ly if they are al­so ex­ceed­ing­ly pop­u­lar. Foot­ballers can use their sta­tus and wealth to buy up NFTs and sell them at a high­er place at a lat­er date, a process known as "chang­ing hands".

“In the old days, re­tired play­ers used to open a pub or do af­ter-din­ner speak­ing. Now we see peo­ple like John Ter­ry us­ing his mil­lion­aire lifestyle to at­tract sup­port­ers in­to buy­ing in­to NFTs with the un­spo­ken promise that it will al­low them to ac­cess the kind of lifestyle he has," says Mar­tin Calla­dine, co-au­thor of Fit and Prop­er Peo­ple, a new book about how foot­ball clubs are owned.

Es­sen­tial­ly, foot­ballers are us­ing their in­flu­ence to get ahead in the NFT mar­ket, which is seen by many ex­perts as an in­vest­ment ve­hi­cle akin to oth­er types of spec­u­la­tive trad­ing such as the stock mar­ket.

The NFT mar­ket is al­ready a lu­cra­tive one for those ac­tive­ly trad­ing. A Kylian Mbappe card, for ex­am­ple, changed hands in De­cem­ber 2020 for about £47,000 (£65,000) on the plat­form So­rare.

While NFTs is yet to take off in Caribbean sport, crick­et fans may be among the first to re­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence it with the ICC ICC hav­ing an­nounced a part­ner­ship last No­vem­ber with Faze to cre­ate ex­clu­sive dig­i­tal col­lec­tables of the great­est mo­ments from ICC events. Com­bin­ing the ICC’s deep archive of his­tor­i­cal crick­et mo­ments with cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy on the Flow blockchain, this new ex­pe­ri­ence means fans can col­lect NFTs of some of the most talked-about shots, catch­es, and wick­ets from ICC events.

The use of live con­tent has been shift­ing for years to­wards the dig­i­tal medi­um. 5G - once it has be­come wide­spread - will be the tech­nol­o­gy that will de­fin­i­tive­ly trans­form the way we fol­low sport. 5G net­works are spread­ing around the world, de­liv­er­ing speed, in­creased ca­pac­i­ty and ul­tra-low la­ten­cy.

In ad­di­tion, 5G al­lows you to en­rich the user ex­pe­ri­ence with live in­ter­ac­tive con­tent. BBox - for ex­am­ple - de­vel­ops en­gag­ing Aug­ment­ed Re­al­i­ty (AR) con­tent that fans can ac­cess via their smart­phones, such as the abil­i­ty to take pho­tos with play­ers, 360° sta­di­um tours and in­fo­graph­ics on play­er per­for­mance.

For to­day's fans, it's not enough to have the game in front of their eyes: they want analy­sis, sta­tis­tics and ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion about the play­ers and op­po­nents of their favourite teams.

The use of new tech­nolo­gies al­lows the de­vel­op­ment of deep loy­al­ty and fan en­gage­ment pro­grams. As or­ga­ni­za­tions in the in­dus­try man­age to con­nect all points of a sin­gle fan's jour­ney, they will be able to dri­ve per­son­al­ized con­nec­tions and ex­pe­ri­ences that will in­crease the lifes­pan val­ue of fans.

Vir­tu­al ad­ver­tis­ing with­in sta­di­ums is, in fact, mak­ing gi­ant strides, and promis­es to be­come a cru­cial el­e­ment to al­low brands and leagues to struc­ture rev­enues in a more or­ga­nized way, and to of­fer con­tent more in line with their au­di­ence. Thanks to this tech­nol­o­gy, the phys­i­cal spaces ded­i­cat­ed to spon­sors and present in the sta­di­ums with the side pan­els of the field, dur­ing the course of the games can be re­placed by vir­tu­al video con­tent, pro­duced in re­al-time and cus­tomiz­able.

Sport and the re­la­tion­ship of so­ci­eties with en­thu­si­asts are chang­ing. Of­fer­ing new and en­gag­ing ex­pe­ri­ences is what will al­low the sec­tor to grow again and over­come the eco­nom­ic and im­age cri­sis that many re­al­i­ties have ex­pe­ri­enced in the last two years of the pan­dem­ic. In­vest­ing in new tech­nolo­gies, al­ready used by its au­di­ence, and cre­at­ing a re­la­tion­ship of re­spect and trust with fans are the tools avail­able to­day to look to the fu­ture of sports.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com