Fans will soon be able to earn cryptocurrency for showing up to and checking into live events. A new three-year partnership between streaming service SportsCastr and event organizer FanWide will reward fans with the FanChain token, FANZ, for attending viewing parties.
SportsCastr is a live-streaming video platform that enables anyone (but also a lot of pro athletes via the NFLPA and WNBPA) to be rewarded for adding their own color commentary to live events. FanWide is a Meetup-like platform for sports viewing events. As well as earning FANZ for simple attendance, fans will also be incentivized to livestream watch parties via the SportsCastr platform in exchange for more FANZ.
The partnership opens up FANZ to eventually being accepted at the roughly 10,000 third-party bars in the FanWide network. Fans will also be able to use that currency to buy goods on SportsCastr’s not-yet-launched rewards site, fanprizes.com, or through what will eventually be a host of perks, such as merchandise and team tickets, offered via the FanWide platform. Since launching in September 2016, FanWide has helped fans organize and promote more than 750,000 local watch parties.
“FanWide’s support of FanChain will allow our users to be rewarded for supporting their favorite teams and local businesses, through actions like ‘checking in’ to game watch parties,” said Cliff Avril, former NFL player and FanWide advisor, in a statement. “Looking forward, we can see many uses for FanChain on our platform, including in-person and online commerce.”
Over time, the two companies hope to link FANZ to the point-of-sale systems at FanWide bars so that fans can buy things such as beer or food at partner restaurants. Since FANZ is a cryptocurrency set to list on exchanges, fans will eventually also be able to trade-in their FANZ for legal tender, including real dollars.
“We hope to have it accepted at the point-of-sales at bars around the world and have it on exchanges so users can exchange FANZ for fiat currency as early next year,” said SportsCastr CEO Kevin April, in an interview.
While FANZ is a SportsCastr product, the company envisions the currency could eventually power the entire traditional sports ecosystem, linking fans to teams, leagues, sports companies, and partner bars where they’ll be able to exchange FANZ for a range of related physical goods and experiences. FanChain’s decentralized infrastructure allows its technology to be integrated within platforms like FanWide, fantasy sports providers, social networks, sports teams, leagues, and venues.
April said SportsCastr is already in talks with about a dozen teams to integrate the cryptocurrency into their ecosystems, potentially one day enabling FANZ holders to exchange the currency for tickets, merchandise, concessions or other in-person experiences. SportsCastr is additionally holding discussions with a few “very large” international sports businesses as well, he said.
“I really believe this partnership with FanWide is powerful because as soon as you start being able to reach real physical fans who are attending watch parties in local cities you’re connecting the digital world with the real world,” April said. “We want this to be the sports cryptocurrency.”
As part of SportsCastr’s ambitious cryptocurrency plans, the company eventually believes it will have collected so much data about fan purchasing behavior and activity that it will be able to provide business analytics services to sports stakeholders. Put another way, it will surface new business intelligence about fans that might prove valuable to the leagues and teams to pad top-line revenue with fan spending.