The ultimate list of football NFT and Web3 projects
NFTs are perhaps one of the most talked-about tech trends of the recent and past year. Now they are coming to football. In this article, we will try to structure a sea of projects and give you a framework to think about new football projects. You will discover NFT projects that are already supported by big clubs like Barcelona, Bayern Munich, or Manchester City or single players like Ronaldinho or Bruno Fernandes, and we will organise them in Collectibles, Games, Digital Video Moments, Avatars, and Fan Tokens.
This is a comprehensive list that we’ll update regularly with new projects as they are announced.
What is an NFT or digital collectibles?
For all people who think tl;dr: watch this video
Digital collectibles are non-fungible tokens (NFT). NFTs are a digital asset that exists only once, and the holder is the true owner of it. This ownership is permanently verified by the blockchain, and is visible for everyone who wants to prove it.
NFTs enable digital scarcity since the real owner of the asset can be distinguished from any other person who simply saves the image on a hard drive, or copy-pastes it in a local drive. Same as with real-life artwork, an NFT is unique, and can only be owned by one person at a time.
NFTs can be traded between users on a public blockchain. Each NFT carries its own artwork, a serial number and the history of previous owners, all of which makes it a unique digital asset.
Overview
We have covered the many use cases of web3 and NFTs for sports in a previous blog post. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here. Along these categories, we have compiled the list of what we believe are the most interesting projects made for football fans.
Collectibles
A homage to classic sticker collectibles that we remember from our childhood. Trade them with your friends and build your collection. This trend is continuing in the digital world. With the addition that the owner of specific digital collectibles also gets the chance to win exclusive access or rewards attached to the NFTs, like match tickets, jerseys or meet & greets.
1. HATTTRICKS / Aera Marketplace
HATTTRICKS (”TTT”) is adigital football collectible game currently in development that combines the concept of physical trading cards with the unique properties of NFTs. The TTT collectibles represent the unique skill traits of world-class football players. Fans and collectors can purchase packs to start their collection and complete challenges to receive special rewards. So far amazing players like Marc-André ter Stegen, Raphaël Varane, Sadio Mané, Robin Gosens and Alphonso Davies are part of the TTT family and many more great names in football are yet to come.
TTT will be a collection that can be traded on Aera, the NFT marketplace for football fans featuring the biggest clubs, leagues, federations and players in football. Built to make digital collectibles accessible to all, Aera is the home for football fans wanting to connect and share their passion in the digital space. The project is powered by the Flow blockchain and will be easily accessible through credit card payments enabled via the Dapper Wallet.
The project is built by OneFootball Labs, a recently funded joint venture between Animoca Brands and OneFootball. Read more about it here.
2. Fansea
“Immortalize real objects and bring them to life as digital and printable originals.” This is what Fansea promises users. The goal is to bring users closer to the historical moments of their favourite teams and even 3D print the most unique objects.
Fansea is able to scan real-life assets like match-worn jerseys and to create exact digital replicas out of them. With this, Fansea wants to bridge the gap between real-life stories and the digital metaverse. With their 3D printing technology, the pieces can be transformed from the digital to the real world.
3. Fanz
Fanz wants to combine legends, artists and the community in NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Their most high-profile collection to date is the Motty collection. It features John Motson, the BBC football commentator for over 50 years. Each collectible focuses on a single game, including an audio description by Motty, game stats and an animation of him.
Fanz also have another project “Fanz Fantasy5” — a free to play game, where a user selects 5 players from 5 matches across the Premier League. Depending on their real-life performance, users can win NFTs or signed merchandise from several players.
4. Fanzone
Fanzone.io is a platform that allows sport fans to collect, buy and trade digital trading cards. Weekly raffles, competitions and mini-games give the users the chance to get rare cards and soon, rewards.
Fanzone runs on Polygon (a layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain) and LUKSO (a public and domain-specific blockchain).
Their Football licenses include the German national team (female and male), VFL Wolfsburg, and, the 3rd German league.
5. Panini
It’s no surprise that Panini doesn’t want to miss out on the NFT hype to bring the collectible game to the Web3.
In the classic style, various players can be collected and “pasted” into the digital scrapbook. Not much has changed in terms of design, and they swear by the familiar style of the classic player portrait photo.
Next to other sports like the NBA, NFL and MLB, Panini has also secured the licenses of Ligue 1 and the FIFA World Cup 2022, which is why players such as Messi, Neymar Jr. and Mbappé are on their roster. All cards are purchased in $USD rather than cryptocurrencies with different rarities of cards available.
The utility of these cards is the ability to trade them and some are even available as physical versions which might include a player autograph or memorabilia.
6. Shirtum
Shirtum promises to give the users access to exclusive real world experiences and unique events by collecting the NFTs of their favourite idols.
Fans buy the NFTs directly from their favourite athletes or clubs. Shirtum operates the platform that allows players and clubs to sell their NFTs. Some of the most impressive collaborations include Ronaldinho and Galatasaray Istanbul.
In order to acquire the NFTs, the user must first acquire the so-called $SHI tokens. These serve as currency within the platform and are on the Binance Smart Chain network. Moreover, the technology is ready to create tokens following the ERC-20 standard of the Ethereum Network in the future.
7. Fantastec SWAP
In Fantestec SWAP fans can collect, buy, sell and trade football NFT collectible moments of some of Europe’s top clubs like Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid CF and Arsenal FC.
Sold in packs, there are several different types of NFTs possible to get. A pack can contain match highlights, officially licensed digital autograph signatures or even behind-the-scenes training moments.
As the name of the company implies, the main focus relies on swapping the football NFTs. For all this Fantestec SWAP is using the Flow blockchain.
8. SportsIcon
SportsIcon partnered with elite athletes Floyd Mayweather, Romelu Lukaku to release NFT videos, art and moments to their fans.
The Romelu Lukaku NFT Club is the most recent SportsIcon collection, in which 3000 unique PFP NFTs of Lukaku are created. The sale starts in May / June and gives the most engaged fans the chance to win several experiences from the Belgium striker, e.g. meet-and-greets (virtual and in person) or match-tickets. All this is built on the Flow blockchain.
Others: xG Studios (Flow), World Cup Apes (Ethereum)
Football Games
Football fantasy manager games are often combined with a play-to-earn mechanism, in which users have to acquire their own team. Successful players will earn rewards in form of coins or NFTs. Additionally, some projects are building sports simulation games in the Metaverse either to play or to watch while owning the players and staff as NFTs.
1. Sorare
With more than 150 clubs, the french company Sorare is the first mover for global digital football trading cards.
With simple pictures of players and different rarities, Sorare offers an NFT collection game, which allows the users to collect several players from different leagues and build up their favourite squad.
By competing against other users in different competitions the game uses real-time data to allocate the points of a specific squad. Depending on the actual performance of the player, the squad receives points.
The most expensive cards ever sold include Kevin de Bruyne ($167,469), Cristiano Ronaldo ($265,275) and Erling Haaland ($687,000).
2. AIFA Football
AIFA is a decentralised Play-to-earn game economy, built by Altered State Machine (ASM).
ASM is a platform to build, train and trade AI bots using NFTs, so the AI can compete or interact with one another. Their goal is to unleash the power of Non-Fungible Intelligence and to shape the football Metaverse.
To join the game, users can purchase the ASM AIFA Genesis Boxes, which are available in 4 different rarities and contain 4 All-Star characters and one ASM Brain each, or buy the All-Star players and Brains on Opensea.
To play a football game, a user needs 4 All-Stars and 4 ASM Brains to create a fully autonomous team. With the help of their own $ASTO token, the users can train their Brains and test their squad against others.
3. Footium
Footium is a play-to-earn Web3 football management game that allows users to create and manage their own football club. The first drop in November 2021 included 3,060 different club NFTs and sold out immediately. Footium is multi-chained and can be used on Ethereum, Solana and Binance Smart Chain. Each clubs is made up of 6 components:
- A squad (20 different players with different skills)
- A fanbase that will develop based on the club’s performance
- Club kits
- History
- An academy that produces new players (quality depends on the division)
- A stadium that can be improved over time
The ‘game’ has yet to launch and is in beta mode, but owning a club allows the users to get a vote to shape the finer points of the mechanics. In general the goal is to compete against other clubs and to climb the tables to reach a higher division.
4. MetaSoccer
MetaSoccer is a play-to-earn football Metaverse where the users can own and/or manage their own clubs. By owning a club the user’s main goal is to equip the club with the best personnel e.g. players or scouts.
As a manager, the users are in charge of managing the team and making it successful. By playing with the team, players gain experience and improve their skills. The game includes a time component in which the player and scouts age over time. 1 month in real life corresponds to 1 year in the game. Players and scouts retire at a certain age, and their performances will also decline over time, so it’s important to scout the best players and scouts.
The player’s objective is to climb through the divisions and generate income for the club. By achieving that, users can generate the $MSU token by selling players, getting sponsorships and winning matches.
5. GOALS
“Making the perfect football game” — is one of the statements made by game designer Kurt Fenech of GOALS. Instead of securing various licenses, users will be able to secure fictional player-based NFTs and trade them in GOALS.
The free-to-play football game with a play-and-own model describes itself as a “fast-paced game that stays true to the sport of football”. Different assets like players, cosmetics (items that make the players’ visual appearances unique), Stadiums and Trophies are all included.
Even the ageing process of players plays a big role. We are excited to see what GOALs has in store for us.
6. Metaverse Football League
Metaverse Football League is a play-to-earn NFT football game built on Flow, that allows the users to own their dream club, play games and earn rewards by winning leagues and tournaments or selling players.
The players in the game are fictional characters with several hand-drawn visual traits like different headwear, accessories and a different look.
7. Ultimate Champions
The blockchain-based play-to-earn game produced, which runs on the Polygon blockchain, also sounds like an exciting fantasy football manager.
At the beginning, each user receives a certain budget, with which he has to assemble a team of 11 athlete Ultimate Cards. These cards are built in a Sorare-like style and contain photos of the respective players, as well as different ability points.
The users can compete against each other in different game modes. At the moment only the league mode is unlocked. In contrast to Sorare, a complete soccer team, i.e. 11 players, must be set up. The actual performance of the team, again determines the points that the team will receive in the game.
Ultimate Champions also relies on two different tokens, which can be used for in-game purchases. By winning games in the league, the user receives $MGC tokens. By selling players or performing well in the other upcoming competitions, the user will receive $CHAMP tokens. Both tokens can be used in the marketplace or to buy new packs.
8. CLUB
In CLUB, a free-to-earn fantasy football game, the users will become football club owners, build their own dream club and compete against other teams, to earn rewards.
It is offered as a free-to-play mobile game and allows the user to buy, sell and trade some of the biggest stars of todays football world in real time. In doing so, Club refers to the real world performance of the players, while also striving to ensure that the respective clubs are set up realistically and that the points are distributed so that a realistic set-up also receives the recognition deserves.
For example, in other fantasy football games, it is enough to line up a lot of wingers because they provide more assists / goals than defensive midfielders. CLUB tries to make this principle more realistic by distributing points in a new way, so that the deployment of defensive midfielders is rewarded.
Also, users can earn, sell and trade a variety of different in-game items, like club badges, jerseys, stadiums and mascots in different rarities.
To mint these and more items, the user needs the $CLUBCOIN Token ($CC). The cost of minting particular NFTs increases with each one minted and gives early starters an advantage. To avoid monopolisation, each user has a cooldown timer on minting a particular NFT.
So far CLUB starts with players from the English Premier League, but wants to implement stars like Kylian Mbappé, Robert Lewandowski or Erling Haaland in the future.
9. Martian Premier League (MPL)
The Ethereum blockchain-based MPL aims to take football NFTs to another planet with its slightly different play-to-earn approach. For this purpose, 10,000 different genesis characters were created and sent to Mars for a football league.
The ecosystem operates on a dual-token model. On the one hand, there is the utility token $REDDIES, which can be used to improve the players’ performance or to recruit new players. On the other hand, $ROVER will be used as a governance token.
How exactly the gameplay looks is still unclear, but should start in phase 4 according to the roadmap.
10. 5TARS
5TARS describes itself as the first watch-to-earn football NFT worldwide. The user have to predict the results of real-life games, rate the players/managers and choose their MVP’s of the game. The goal is to become the best predictor and rater within the community to get rewarded. Several NFTs like player cards, manager cards and club cards can give the users boosts for their predictions and ratings, so they can earn more points.
Since the game is running on the Binance Smart Chain, $BUSD is the main currency. At a later stage, the project will introduce their own token called STARCOIN, whereas one STARCOIN equals one $BUSD.
11. Ephere
Ephere is a play-to-earn football metaverse. The base of the game is a collection of player NFTs with football-related skills. These NFTs will be used in a football-management simulation game that allows the user to earn cryptocurrencies via skilled gameplay.
Each player has several mental and physical attributes, trainable football skills that can be improved by paying with the in-game token $EPH, and different talents. Most of the players will have average talent, but there will be also some better or worse players. Only a few of them will be real superstars.
By winning games the user receives $EPH that can be used for trainings, hiring players or competing in tournaments.
Others: Nifty Football (Flow), FootDAO (Flow), TopGoal (BNB Smart Chain)
Digital Video Moments
Video moments are made to relive great sports highlights in the form of a video moment. One of the most common and popular use cases has been established in basketball with NBA TopShots by Dapper Labs. As part of the collector experience, fans open packs, own special moments and build their own collection.
1. LaLiga on Flow by Dapper Labs
The giant behind NBA Top Shot, UFC Strike, NFL ALL DAY and the Flow Blockchain is taking the next big step and enters football with the La Liga video moment collection the Footballverse. Legendary LaLiga highlights are brought to life in Web3. It can be expected that the experience will be very similar to the existing Dapper Labs products.
Trade the moments with a global community and building legendary collections are the motto again. We remain curious if Dapper can make LaLiga video moments as successful as their other projects. La Liga has been and still is the home to the best footballers on earth.
2. Topps NFTs
Topps NFTs has made their entry into the world of Web3 with their Topps Bundesliga 21/22 Series. It’s a set of NFT collectibles celebrating the most memorable moments of the Bundesliga 2021/22 season, each video moment includes a video of a match-highlight and the commentary. Interestingly, Topps NFTs have been minted on the Avalanche blockchain which is quite exotic for a sports NFT project.
For the Bundesliga 21/22 Series, Topps will split the season into different sections. Series 2 has just released with each NFT containing a highlight from match days 6–10 including goals from Lewandowski, Reus and other amazing moments.
It will be interesting to see if the Bundesliga license for NFTs sticks with Topps since the German Football League has announced a “tender for stickers, trading cards and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for the seasons 2023–24 onwards” (Source: DFL.de).
3. Realfevr
Realfevr has a similar approach to Topps NFT and was able to secure the rights of the Primeira Liga, the Portuguese top-flight, and the Portuguese Football Federation.
Users can buy highlights of past years and different seasons as NFTs. This includes goals from Cristiano Ronaldo, Deco, and their ambassador Bruno Fernandes. In addition to the NFT Marketplace, Realfevr also offers Fantasy Football leagues and announced a play-to-earn game.
All this is powered by the Binance Smart Chain and the $FEVR token.
4. Sportium (ELVN)
ELVN is a football NFT platform by Sportium, and is an officially licensed product of the K-League. Users can open packs, collect cards that include video highlights and trade them with other fans on the marketplace. Once a user accumulates 11 cards either by owning or borrowing them, they can share earnings which adds a new dimension to digital video moments. ELVN also allows the user to combine multiple moments for a chance to earn special edition cards, that are not for sale via loot boxes. The project is backed by industry leaders like Dapper Labs and Animoca Brands.
Others: DAZN MOMENTS (Flow)
Fashion and Avatars
1. The Football Club
The Football Club (TFC) started in 2020 is a football Metaverse based on avatars, licensed digital collectibles and competitions mainly focussing on the 1. and 2. Bundesliga.
It is an officially licensed daily fantasy sports product, that enhances the experiences with avatars that represent the owner in the digital world. By managing football teams every game week, it connects the real-life football fandom and fantasy gaming.
Users have to build their team out of over 1,000 originally licensed players. The real-life statistics of the players let the users earn XP, win points and competitions. Users can buy TFC branded clothes and accessories as well as licensed jerseys from Bundesliga clubs incl. Borussia Dortmund, Werder Bremen, VfL Wolfsburg or Eintracht Frankfurt for their Avatar. The purchase can be made with the off-chain reward token or FUSD through the Blocto Wallet (Flow Blockchain).
2. Fancurve
Fancurve is an emerging platform for fandom and digital fashion. They are partnering with athletes, football clubs, brands and creators to design digital jerseys built on the blockchain. Their goal is to make NFTs wearable in the metaverse instead of just being statical images. Both, sports and fashion consumers count to be their focus group and have experienced significant blockchain related activity in the past months.
Fan Tokens / Community Voting
1. Socios
Socios is a platform that offers fan tokens of several clubs like Manchester City, Inter Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, FC Barcelona and many more. With Lionel Messi as the global brand ambassador, Socios goal is to give the fans a voice in the club.
Each token is comparable to a club membership which gives the fan influence in the clubs’ decisions. It gives users several rewards and gives the right to vote on official club polls. All tokens are digital assets that are minted and secured on the Ethereum blockchain. The more tokens a fan owns, the higher his/her impact will be on a club’s decision.
Fan tokens are fungible tokens, but Socios has already announced to use NFTs as loyalty programs for fans.
DAO / Football Club Ownership
1. Futera United
Coaching your own fantasy football team is an idea that many different football NFT projects have implemented. Futera wants to take a different approach and enable NFT holders to manage a REAL football team.
The holders of one of the 7700 unique player cards have the possibility to decide about e.g. the tactics, lineups, and signings of a real-world football club. Therefore, Futera United FC is part of the Bangkok Premier Legaue D.4. The NFTs are built on the Polygon blockchain.
For the future, Futera is also planning to integrate the NFTs also in the Sandbox and plans to build a virtual stadium.
2. World of Football
The on the Ethereum blockchain build football NFT project World of Football (WoF) wants to combine the web3 with real-world football clubs. Their goal is to take a percentage of the revenue generated from the mint and to invest it in a real-world football club.
Possession of a WoF NFT means, among other things, exclusive membership in said professional football clubs, voting opportunities in club-related decisions.
Furthermore WoF uses a part of the revenue for donating it to the Upper Nile Sports Academy to help building a full pitch in South Sudan.
For the future, WoF has also planned a similar approach for a female collection, which will also invest in a women’s professional football team in Europe.
3. NFT FC
NFT FC wants to support young athletes in their development without requiring shares of their future income. According to NFT FC, many young athletes are often deceived by agents in their still-young careers and give a high percentage of their salary to them.
NFT FC wants to provide support to the players e.g. in managing their image & IP rights, financial questions and tips regarding brand deals.
Owning an NFT gives the owner access to several athletes including e.g. game tickets, signed jerseys, virtual meetups and personalised messages from the athletes. The goal is to support the players and to grow the engagement between the fans and supporters. For this NFT FC is planning to release their own governance token, $NFTFC.
Thanks for reading this blog post! Leave a comment below if you have any questions. Be sure to sign up for the HATTTRICKS Newsletter. This is the start of a blog series that introduces the HATTTRICKS project incl. the vision, game mechanic, target community and much more!
Please check out the other blog posts in this series:
About HATTTRICKS
HATTTRICKS (”TTT”) is a collection currently in development that will be launched exclusively on the Aera marketplace and is created by OneFootball Labs. The project is a fully licensed digital football collectible game, featuring world-class footballers.
About Aera by OneFootball
Aera is the NFT marketplace for football fans, a digital collectibles platform featuring the biggest clubs, leagues, federations, and players in football. Built to make digital collectibles accessible to all, Aera is the home for football fans wanting to connect and share their passion in the digital space. When fans think about football NFTs, they should think about Aera. The Aera marketplace is built by OneFootball Labs.
About OneFootball Labs
The OneFootball Labs joint venture is set to deliver a new era of football fan consumption, providing accessible, affordable, and unique fan experiences that will drive mass adoption of blockchain technology in football. These products will be offered at different price points to make them widely accessible, and fans will also be able to purchase and store digital collectibles with just their email and a credit card. Animoca Brands, the company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the metaverse, OneFootball, the world’s largest football media platform, and Liberty City Ventures are part of the joint venture.
To join the project and community, connect with Aera by OneFootball on Twitter, Instagram, Discord follow the Medium publications, or sign up for our Newsletter
