The FIFA World Cup 2022, the world’s most widely-watched sports event, offers an all-new experience to fans. It empowers them not only to experience iconic moments but also to own them by purchasing NFT collectibles featuring the images and history of players and clubs alike. The ownership of NFTs also allows the fans to participate in club decisions. Moreover, the Crawley Town Football Club has recently signed a player based on the votes of fans and NFT holders.
NFTs are non fungible tokens securely recorded on a blockchain which ensures the asset is one-of-a-kind and makes it difficult to alter or counterfeit NFT assets. These digital assets use a ledger to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership.
This season, many high-profile football players, clubs, and FIFA are releasing various NFT projects to further drive fan engagement. FIFA has recently rolled out its FIFA+ Collect initiative, a licensed collection of digital collectibles featuring moments throughout FIFA’s nearly 100-year history. Barcelona launched its first NFT in July 2022, ahead of the LaLiga season. Liverpool FC has also released its official digital collectibles – ‘Legendary’ NFTs and the ‘Hero Edition’ project that combine multiple player illustrations to produce a unique digital collectible for each fan.
We’ve compiled a list of the top football NFT projects to invest in 2022 and also support your favorite team and players.
Let’s get right to it!
1. Topps NFTs
Topps, an online marketplace for licensed football collectibles, forayed into the Web 3 arena with its official Bundesliga NFT Series. The Bundesliga non-fungible token (NFT) collectible, created of noteworthy league moments from the 2021/22 seasons, helped the Topps platform achieve popularity within the football NFT community.
Topps produces the NFT collectible in series, and the most recent Topps Series 4 was published in June 2022. Topps football NFT collectibles are ERC 721 tokens and come in packs with varying numbers of collectibles inside. The buyer learns about the collectibles only after the pack is opened.
To buy Topps NFTs on its platform, you must create a Topps account and link your Mastercard or Visa credit cards.
2. Fantestec SWAP
Fantestec SWAP is a platform for football lovers to buy, trade, collect, and sell football NFT artifacts. The collectibles feature recorded moments from famous European football clubs such as Real Madrid CF, Arsenal FC, and Borussia Dortmund.
3. Sorare
Sorare is one of the top football blockchain games where players buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team with digital player cards. Sorare allows users to win rewards that they can exchange for money. You can create online gaming squads with cards from your collection and collect points to compete in a tournament. You can also earn by training your players, playing friendly matches, or beating your rivals in death matches. To participate in the gaming contests, a player must collect a minimum of five player cards. In addition, players are rewarded based on their skills and weekly rankings. You can collect and trade officially licensed digital player cards with other fans in the open marketplace.
Sorare has a utility advantage over the earlier Wrapped Strikers NFTs in that players can earn money by creating rosters from their cards of particular players.
The Sorare NFT collection features over 280 football leagues and top soccer players, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylian Mbappé, and Lionel Messi.
Erling Haaland was the most expensive NFT sold on the Sorare marketplace. Haaland’s NFT sold for more than $600,000, beating the previous record set by Cristiano Ronaldo’s NFT ($400,312).
4. Shirtum
Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy NFTs straight from your favorite soccer player or club? This is where Shirtum distinguishes itself by allowing fans to purchase official NFTs from prominent football clubs and legendary players. Shirtum’s aim is to enable sports players to share their stories with fans and embed this content into NFTs. On the Shirtum marketplace, users can collect and trade those NFTs as they learn more about their favorite players.
Galatasaray Istanbul and Ronaldinho are among the platform’s featured partners.
To purchase NFTs, users must have the Shirtum ecosystem’s native SHI token in their crypto wallets.
5. LaLiga and Dapper Labs NFTs
Dapper Labs, the NBA Top Shot creator, has collaborated with LaLiga to launch their Official Football NFT Collectible Highlights. The collectibles are iconic and inspiring gaming moments in the form of NFTs, based on the most popular recorded moments from LaLiga matches over the last 20 seasons.
Popular LaLiga clubs include FC Barcelona, Real Betis, Villarreal CF, Real Madrid, Valencia CF, Atlético de Madrid, Athletic Club, Sevilla FC, and many others.
Fans can also buy, trade, and sell the listed items on the peer-to-peer NFT marketplace using a Dapper wallet or credit cards.
The NFT value changes according to its demand and scarcity. LaLiga fans can verify and trace the scarcity and validity of the listed digital collectibles on the Flow blockchain.
6. RealFevr
RealFevr, powered by BNB Smart Chain, is a fantasy football leagues, trading moments app, and video NFTs marketplace. It allows users to purchase various football-based NFTs, including digital highlights of memorable performances by Christiano Ronaldo, Bruno Fernandez, Iker Casillas, Diogo Jota, and many other football players.
You can buy NFT video collectibles from the RealFevr NFT marketplace and compete in “Fantasy Leagues” or use the “FEVR Battle Arena” to win NFTs and FEVR tokens, the platform’s utility token used to acquire NFTs.
You must download the RealFevr app from the Google Play Store or the iOS App Store to participate in the league contests.
7. Fanz
Fanz is a blockchain technology-based football platform dedicated to fans, with the goal of integrating fan culture with blockchain technology. The Fanz platform’s principal aspect is the groundbreaking “Football in Web 3.0” concept. The platform users are granted access to games, governance, and NFTs.
Fanz’s vision is to turn the next generation of football fans from customers into owners. Users can send, receive, and store Ethereum and other ERC-20 tokens by connecting their wallets to the platform.
The most popular NFT in the Fanz NFT collection, “Motty Collection,” features John Motson, a former BBC football analyst from England, who worked for the BBC for almost 50 years.
Fanz Fantasy5 is a free-to-play game developed in collaboration with the Premier League that awards gamers with signed merchandise and NFTs based on their gaming success.
8. AIFA Football
AIFA, Artificial Intelligence Football Association, is a decentralized gaming platform that uses NFTs to train, trade, and build AI bots.
The game is created with an Altered State Machine (ASM) to bring Non-Fungible Intelligence to the football metaverse. It enables players to compete against other players for in-game tokens and NFTs.
The ASTO token is an in-game token used in the ASM gaming ecosystem to train your AI bots against other AIFA teams and participate in community-based governance activities.
The ASM AIFA Genesis Boxes are available on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. After purchasing the box, you can open and configure it and customize your team to compete in various online competitions.
Users can connect their wallets to the AIFA platform to easily store and trade NFTs and ASTO tokens.
9. Socios.com
Socios.com, an online platform created for football lovers, provides fans access to key club influencers.
Socios.com enables users to purchase Fan Tokens for popular football clubs such as Barcelona, Paris Saint Germain, Juventus, Atletico Madrid, Arsenal, Manchester City, etc.
In addition to Fan Tokens, the network has made available NFTs of several popular teams such as Barcelona, Juventus, PSG, and Valencia CF. AC Milan was the first team to embark on its NFT adventure with Socios.com.
Closing Thoughts
The blockchain and Web 3 elements have added a touch of uniqueness to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. To quote Jorge Urrutia del Pozo, head of football at Dapper Labs, “Blockchain allows for true ownership in ways the Web2 platforms cannot.”
NFT collections empower football fans worldwide to own unique digital art pieces inspired by some of the most remarkable moments in Football history. Moreover, NFTs have become a popular approach for Football Clubs and top players to communicate with their fans and market their teams.
Sport fans are no longer merely spectators; by purchasing NFTs, they can own various official assets of players and clubs and even vote on major club decisions.
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