How the digital asset of the Blaugrana footballer was created
Alexia’s NFT, the first female soccer player to launch a digital asset on the market, was made possible by the intervention of Polygon, a blockchain company that issued this unique piece. The founder and executive director of Polygon is Antoni Martin Bertran, a Catalan who ended up winning the auction in a fact that highlighted some of the irregularities that occurred. One of the reasons why Socios.com, the company that bought 24.5% of Barça Studios, did not participate in this initiative was that its business model is based more on loyalty products from sports fans to their equipment than in collecting. In addition, Socios.com did not have the appropriate technology to manage a project of the magnitude of Alexia’s in the summer of 2023.
Socios.com’s relationship with Barça and other football clubs
Socios.com entered Barça in 2020 when Chiliz, the blockchain platform (decentralized digital system that records shared transactions between a network that cannot be modified) on which it depends, became a global sponsor of the Barça club, a condition that encpremium.cat currently maintains. Other football clubs that also have commercial agreements with Socios.com are Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus Turin, AC Milan, Arsenal, Benfica and Inter Milan. But the most important step that the company took with Barça and that it has not yet repeated with any other club was to become an investor in the summer of 2022. Since then, some of the aforementioned clubs have expressed the his interest in expanding his collaboration with Socios.com along similar lines to that of the Barcelona club.
Far from expectations
The reason for Socios.com’s investment was the delicate economic situation suffered by Barça, which led the Laporta board to resort to levers with the aim of continuing to be able to sign and register players to be competitive on the field and close the last exercises with positive numbers. Thus, Socios.com saw in the Catalan club an opportunity to demonstrate to the world what it was capable of doing in a sector unknown to most people and also to many agents in the world of football.
But, a year and a half after the beginning of the adventure, several sources indicate to this medium that expectations have not been met and point out as one of the problems the lack of depth with which Barça still projects that belong to this area of the club. The main task of Socios.com has been to structure Barça Vision, which includes the digital content produced by the entity chaired by Joan Laporta, and the project with Plastiks, which aims to contribute to environmental sustainability through web3 (a service of the internet that has no intermediaries between developers and users).
The resale of Barça Studios
The purchase operation of 24.5% of Barça Studios by Socios.com, together with the acquisition of another 24.5% of Jaume Roures’ assets, Orpheus Media, amounted to 200 million for Barça from an accounting point of view. At the time of the acquisition in the summer of 2022, each of the companies paid 10 million to the club. And, according to the treasury plan presented by Barça to the League, each should have paid another 30 million before June 15, 2023.
Subsequent payments, however, were never made and the deal was amended with the resale of 29.7% of this half of Barça Studios to Libero Football Finance (9.8%) and NIPA Capital (19 .7%) in exchange for 120 million euros. The second operation exempted Socios.com and Orpheus Media from paying the 30 million that corresponded each in 2023 because 20 of these became the responsibility of NIPA and 40 of Libero.
The difference between the accounting millions and those entered
Libero’s 40 has not arrived and with 2023 already over, Barça announced that it would take legal action. Currently, the Barça Studios pie among investors is divided as follows: NIPA 19.7%, Socios.com 17.1% and Orpheus Media 2.4%. The 9.8% held by Libero remains outstanding. Meanwhile, in the last balance sheet of the club, Barça Studios, from an accounting point of view, represents 408 million, which will have to be updated downwards if no solution is found before June 30. In addition, Socios.com, as reported by SER Catalunya, does not plan to make any further payments. If this scenario is fulfilled, of the 100 million accounting euros that the purchase of 24.5% of Barça Studios in 2022 by Socios.com meant, the Catalan entity will only have paid 10 after the end of the relationship .
