Socios Inject 100 Million Dollars To Develop Metaverse FC Barcelona

JAKARTA – The biggest fan token developer, Socios, will reportedly invest in the metaverse development of Spain's top football club, FC Barcelona. This is part of the club's efforts to diversify their funds following the rise of Barcelona after the financial crisis that hit the club last year.

These efforts have attracted the attention of a number of venture capital (VC) companies. Socios.com, a company that designs fan engagement with sports clubs through fan tokens and NFT, announced that it will invest US$100 million (approximately Rp1.4 trillion) into the metaverse, NFT and Web3 divisions of soccer club FC Barcelona,​ which is called Bara Studios.

According to the club's announcement, the decision is part of an effort to "accelerate the club's audiovisual, blockchain, NFT and Web3 strategy." This inflow of capital will allow the company to focus on developing new products that include these new technologies to build new long-term revenue sources.

While Socios stated that currently Barca Studios will have access to Chiliz Chain, a new blockchain that will allow developers to issue NFTs and fan tokens, and build decentralized financial products (DeFi) and play-to-earn (P2E) games. .

"Barca Studios can now leverage our technology, expertise and global scale to help launch the Club's Web3 content strategy and provide a new long-term revenue stream that will benefit the club for seasons to come," said Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Socios.

FC Barcelona president, Joan Laporta once stated that the focus on the digital realm is a very significant part of the company's growth strategy by creating new opportunities.

“We want to create new opportunities to develop. Our goal is to win titles and keep our fans happy, but we also have to profit from opportunities in the sports industry. It is a matter of survival,” said Laporta, quoted by Bitcoin.com News.

The announcement was immediately responded by FC Barcelona fan tokens (BAR) which skyrocketed almost 50% from the price of 5 US dollars flying to the level of 7.20 US dollars per token on 3 August yesterday. However, as of writing, the price of the BAR token has decreased by 0.5% in the last 24 hours, based on data from Coingecko.