The football team has spent a significant portion of the past year focusing on building nonfungible token collections.
As Spanish soccer giant FC Barcelona reveals its genius: a €120 million ($132 million) investment infusion from Libero Football Finance AG and Nipa Capital B.V., a development that catapults its Web3 flagship initiative, Barça Vision, to unprecedented heights, the stage is set for a digital revolution in the world of sports.
Stepping Onto the Digital Pitch
On August 11th, FC Barcelona made a thunderous announcement announcing the sale of a 29.5% ownership in Bridgeburg Invest, the vehicle for Barça Vision, in exchange for the sizeable sum of money.
The idea behind Barça Vision is indeed visionary; it is the club’s bold attempt to symbiotically combine the huge world of digital information including Web3 and blockchain, spanning the domains of NFTs and the metaverse. Developers claim that this program is a crucial part of the team’s overall plan to create the digital Espai Barça.
Libero Football Finance AG, a publicly traded company in Germany well known for its expert financial consulting services to soccer teams, is leading the charge in this innovative undertaking. Nipa Capital B.V., a titan of Dutch venture capital, also contributes its prowess to this ground-breaking alliance.
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The curtain will finally come down in the thrilling last quarter of 2023, but the deal’s grand conclusion is still up in the air as it awaits the discriminating FC Barcelona shareholders’ approval.
From Fan Tokens to NFT Collectibles
FC Barcelona’s digital saga has its beginnings in February 2020, when it partnered with the ground-breaking Chiliz blockchain. This collaboration resulted in FC Barcelona Fan Tokens, which are based on Ethereum and give the sporting brand a cutting-edge feel. Fastforward to August 2022, Chiliz made news by scooping up a sizable 24.5% ownership in Barça Vision’s digital content production division for a startling $100 million, highlighting the club’s paradigm shift in digital strategy.
In conjunction with Plastiks, FC Barcelona unveiled its first NFT collection in May under the name “Unleash Your Passion.” This collection of 3,000 $30 NFTs with animal themes strikes a balance between creativity and sustainability, helping to forward the worthy goal of eliminating 35,000,000 kg of plastic from the earth.
✅| OFFICIAL: FC Barcelona reaches an agreement with Libero Football Finance and private investment advisors NIPA Capital BV to become new partners of Bridgeburg Invest, a Barça Vision trademark.
— Barça Buzz (@Barca_Buzz) August 11, 2023
These investors have acquired 29.5% of the ownership of Barça Vision for €120m,… pic.twitter.com/4aWCMO8iA1
When FC Barcelona’s first NFT work, “Masterpiece #1 In A Way,” sold for an astounding $693,000 at Sotheby’s New York in July 2022, a symphony of triumph reverberated throughout the auction houses. The second gem in this collectible crown, “Masterpiece #2 – Empowerment,” followed suit, gaining its digital prestige on OpenSea for an astounding $300,231 on June 28, 2023, as if written for digital glory.
This bold investment heralds the beginning of a new era where the lines between sports and technology blur, ushering in an exhilarating chapter in the annals of the beautiful game as FC Barcelona develops its narrative in the digital arena.
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