Many changes have occurred in the sport of football since the pandemic. With the loss of revenue and fans itching to return to their favorite pastime, the change would need to come with a renewed need to focus on efficiency. Blockchain in football is the greatest example of how modern technologies are reshaping the world’s favorite sport.

If you think about it, blockchain and football are a natural fit. Blockchain tokenizes value and increases transparency, football is a value-rich sport with a great need for transparency. Recruitment, above all else, is the area of the business most needing modernizing.

What Problems Does Football Face?
Among the growing issues in the sport, the largest one in the last few years has been lost revenue due to the Covid pandemic.

It is calculated that around ₤1 billion was lost from English teams’ revenue alone during the pandemic. With supporters stuck at home and players highly restricted by the virus, there was much less money to make. The sports business relies on active participation and ongoing competition for its main revenue streams to be viable.

Recruiting has also created pressure on the resources available to clubs due to the pandemic.

Firstly, recruiters hoping to find new talent were held back from engaging the next generation of athletes. Without the ability to practice in youth nurseries and talent scouts unable to travel, new players could not be brought into the industry. Though this may have initially saved money for big teams, it also created a void that would need to be filled sooner or later.

A more long-standing monetary concern is the need for greater degrees of transparency in recruiting. With the post-pandemic football industry hungry to make up for lost time, this issue became an even bigger challenge to face.

The effects that this has on players and clubs alike are staggering:

Lost money from deals falling through
Lack of transparency in signing practices leading to lost income for players
Time and effort being put in with limited tangible results
Overly competitive standards leaving a majority of young athletes unsigned

Clubs that are already dealing with the great burden of the pandemic are now also faced with the even more daunting task of bringing in the next generation of all-star players.

This is where technology fuses with the sports industry, where blockchain and football meet.

How is Blockchain used in Sports?
Crypto, and the blockchain space as a whole, have played a huge role in bringing sports new streams of money and a chance to modernize.
Huge Investment Deals
Big players in the crypto space like crypto.com and Tezos, have been working on creating greater exposure through investing in sponsorships in sports. With Tezos partnering with F1 McLaren Racing and CashApp teaming up with many NFL players to promote bitcoin, as examples.

In football, coin advertising has even cropped up around stadiums too, as is the case with Dogecoin being found on the sleeves of Watford FC players.

This much needed injection of funds into the sports sector was a welcomed development during and after the pandemic. While the sports world was seeing a downturn in money coming in, the crypto space was seeing a burst of interest that opened new opportunities for expansion and advertising. Much like the ones mentioned above!

Fan Tokens
Fan tokens are a new concept to both the sports industry and cryptocurrency. They mix governance, tokenized value, and NFTs with sports clubs to give a greater sense of connectivity to the teams fans love. By holding fan tokens, people can have a say in what decisions are taken in a team, get cheaper merchandise, or even get the chance to meet their favorite players.

Recruitment
Turning again to the infrastructural issues that face football, we can understand how blockchain in football is showing how the recruitment process may be improved through it.

The three main concepts of blockchain all need to be considered when approaching these improvements. They are:

Decentralization
Immutability
Peer-to-peer exchange of data and value

Through smart contracts, new and veteran players can build better networks and create a more efficient way of getting signed to teams. Whether this is a completely new player finding their first club or for established big name players transferring, blockchain offers greater transparency and ease of processing.

This is great news for players, scouts, and clubs alike.

Sports Passports
One project developing these concepts for the utility of the sports industry is the TalentIDO.com team. Using their innovative sports passport and platform, TalentIDO aims to create a network of sports industry professionals, enthusiasts, and up-and-coming players, to better position football, and other sports, for the future.

The sports passport is a virtual profile of sports athletes that can be uploaded to the TalentIDO platform. After a player creates one for themselves, prospective clubs or agents must request access to a profile from the player to view it. After learning about the player, their skills, years in the sport, and highlights, a scout can choose to watch them in person, or reach out to them directly.

When a player and agent are ready to broker a deal, they must then use the TalentIDO platform and the player’s sports passport to do so.

By making all deals on-chain, greater transparency can be achieved and the amount of loss through inefficiencies reduced. Players can look forward to greater payouts while clubs are risking a lot less in the process.
How Does the Sports Passport Work?
Athletes who intend to create a profile will need to add TAL tokens to the smart contract that will become their sports passport. This will initiate the process and allow users to add information to the profile. This should include stats like height, age, and nationality, sports skills like what position they play, any training camps they attended, past injuries, and so on. Finally, they should also include any previous club signings, their accomplishments, and score rates.

This data all remains in the hands of the player and is updated whenever the player has reached a new milestone.

For example, when a player is transferred or is signed to a team the information is updated automatically. As with any other actions done through the TalentIDO platform, signings and developments can be added to the profile, but nothing can be removed. This is where the immutable side of the blockchain comes in.

Immutability ensures that transparency is kept and that information can’t be altered or changed. On top of this, as players hold their own data, third parties can only view and interact with it, but never gain ownership of it.

This equates to more money for everyone involved and a lot less time wasted.
TalentIDO and the Future of Sports
Blockchain and football have never had closer ties than they do now. This trend is only likely to continue as blockchain grows and the sports industry seeks out better ways of doing business.

This is evident as we see TalentIDO pave the way for greater efficiency in sports recruiting. Now that the pandemic is over, the world is ready to get back into stadiums and catch up with their favorite teams. Likewise, the sports industry is ready to adopt new technologies to improve their infrastructure for players and fans to make the most out of it.

The future looks bright for the football business, a big part of this is the fusion of blockchain and football for the benefit of all involved.