With the World Cup approaching, let's briefly discuss potential factors influencing the price of Chiliz (CHZ) token.

Author: mrspike.eth

Note: This article was written on September 15, 2022.

On the eve of the FIFA World Cup, let's discuss what I believe are some accessible opportunities in the fan token sector.

Currently, there are two platforms that have partnered with football clubs to issue fan tokens: Binance and Chiliz.

Each has its own appeal. While their platform-level motivations are similar, the drivers influencing price differ significantly.

The World Cup is a global mega-event; by comparison, even the Champions League and domestic leagues pale in significance. It’s a grand festival for every football fan worldwide. During this period, public attention will be overwhelmingly focused on football. On all major social media platforms, football-related topics will undoubtedly dominate—after all, attention is the scarcest resource.

Both platforms aim to leverage this momentum to convert ordinary fans into digital crypto fans.

• Binance’s fan platform entry points are its exchange website and mini-programs within its app, which inherently limits its user base primarily to speculative traders. Moreover, due to fewer club partnerships (only three), it hasn’t achieved network effects. As a result, the secondary market performance of Binance’s partnered clubs remains largely driven by speculation. (The same logic applies to national teams, as they neither own players nor physical venues.)

• Chiliz, however, is the real focal point of the fan token space.

  • In terms of scarcity, fan tokens issued by Chiliz for partnered clubs are exclusive—during the contract period, only Chiliz can issue these tokens.

  • In scale, Chiliz has currently partnered with 64 football clubs, aiming for 75 before November. Essentially, it has signed nearly every club interested in blockchain. The collective fanbases of these clubs converge on socios.com, creating a substantial network effect.

  • Regarding potential users, Chiliz does not target crypto enthusiasts or die-hard fans specifically, but rather the vast number of casual, mainstream fans. These hundreds of millions of casual fans aren’t deeply loyal to any single club nor committed to hardcore football spending. Their consumption behavior is malleable, making the market potential enormous.

Within socios.com (Chiliz’s fan engagement platform), the business model works like this: casual fans use the app — participation in team activities requires holding the respective club’s token — credit card top-ups purchase $CHZ — $CHZ is used to buy and hold club tokens (manual staking) — real money flows into the hands of Chiliz and the clubs (revenue) — ultimately, clubs expand their digital markets and earn significant income, Chiliz grows its ecosystem, and users enrich their digital entertainment experience.

Therefore, Chiliz and the clubs primarily generate revenue through token sales. Whether the user threshold is tens of dollars or more, even converting a few percentage points of the massive football fanbase would yield substantial profits. This also serves as a value foundation for fan tokens—as long as conversion rates haven’t saturated, you won’t get permanently trapped, only possibly locked in longer (until the next bull market).

Thus, Chiliz has far greater urgency than Binance in user acquisition. The once-every-four-years surge in global football interest is an opportunity Chiliz must seize—success over one quarter could equal one or two years’ worth of progress. Any promotional efforts during this time will achieve much greater impact. Every initiative by Chiliz will reflect in its token price: surging user numbers mean increased demand for both $CHZ and club tokens—a healthy positive feedback loop—and potentially one of the main catalysts for $CHZ price growth in the second half of the year.

Another key aspect of Chiliz is CC2 (Chiliz Chain 2.0). Differing regulatory environments across countries have fragmented socios.com into separate regional versions. Chiliz can use CC2 to unify socios.com, consolidating international fan traffic onto a single chain while unlocking the full value of intellectual property (IP).

Previously, NFTs issued by clubs had little utility beyond being stored in personal wallets. This is reflected on OpenSea, where NFTs from the socios.com ecosystem suffer from extremely low liquidity and prices. With CC2, the extensive IP assets held by Chiliz and its partner clubs can finally be utilized—enabling applications such as NFT trading, game adaptations, and socialFi. A freely flowing financial environment might just give rise to new wealth stories. I recommend actively engaging with the socios.com app now and collecting fan cards from major clubs, as these may serve as access thresholds or priority passes once CC2 launches. (Note: Phone numbers from mainland China, the US, and South Korea cannot currently register new accounts.)

Key potential factors influencing $CHZ price:

1. CC2 Launch: First, the staking and locking campaign prior to mainnet launch. Second, after mainnet goes live, EVM-compatible CC2 will enable rapid deployment of applications—IDO launches, DEX liquidity incentives, NFT trading, GameFi projects—all driving strong demand for $CHZ, which could significantly impact the token price in the short term. (A glimpse: On August 11, Barcelona submitted a joint trademark application covering virtual reality games, virtual apparel, footwear, headgear, and cryptocurrency transaction management software.)

2. Surge in User Numbers: Currently, socios.com sees around 10,000–20,000 daily active users. During the World Cup, this could increase tenfold, with monthly active users and total user counts looking even better. User growth directly translates into manual staking volume. While these metrics alone may not trigger a price explosion, they will certainly serve as solid investment justification when latecomers rush in after a breakout.

3. Launch of socios.com US Version: In a recent CEO AMA, it was clearly stated that the US version will launch in summer. Gaining regulatory approval to enter the US market makes for a compelling narrative. After all, the US market is more attractive and financially powerful than any other region.

4. Potential Funding Round: Having proven its value, Chiliz is likely to secure another round of public funding—potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. (Club partnerships were built with real capital: the company previously revealed plans to allocate $50 million for US market expansion, $50 million in developer grants upon CC2 launch, and a $100 million investment in Barcelona’s digital studio in August. Given its last funding round was in 2018 ($66 million), current resources are clearly insufficient. A new funding round has likely already closed—it’s just a matter of timing the announcement.)

I believe this could represent healthy industry growth rather than internal crypto-sector cannibalism. Investors in $CHZ stand to benefit from external narratives—the convergence of mainstream attention during the World Cup—that drive sector-wide growth.

The current overall crypto market environment is poor; no project can rise against the wind. Risk is high—invest cautiously.

Finally

Subjective take on national team tokens: Why speculate on national team tokens?

There’s bound to be skepticism about their lack of practical utility. In short: National team tokens are essentially official World Cup meme coins.

Imagine this scenario: Argentina performs well = Messi is great, Argentina is great = Messi is great, Argentina wins, ARG soars.

Same logic as the Dogeking meme coin mentioned during the Spring Festival Gala.

Emotion is fuel, hype is the metric. The euphoria from victories spreads virally into the capital pool.

Another predictive angle: EA predicts Argentina will win the 2022 World Cup using FIFA23.

EA correctly predicted the champions of the previous three tournaments in 2010, 2014, and 2018.

Price doesn’t always reflect intrinsic value. Once attention converges on the World Cup theme, meme sentiment kicks in, atmosphere builds up—and bubbles form.

After the Ethereum merge hype fades, World Cup-themed assets will capture attention. The entire fan token sector has a market cap of just a few hundred million dollars, and liquidity on Binance is shallow—high volatility is inevitable. Consider overall market risks, CC2 development progress, and app activity data when determining entry and exit points for Chiliz and fan tokens.

Personal subjective view: Most club fan tokens lack clear narratives or fundamental support for speculative value. They mainly move in tandem with Chiliz—recommend taking profits early.

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