It’s been nothing but positive news for Chiliz over the last week, with two significant announcements which thrust the company right back into the spotlight.
Not only have they released details of a new network that will help speed up the development of NFTs, fan tokens, and other decentralized finance (DeFi) products, but they’ve also signed a deal with Lionel Messi. He is one of the most recognizable sports personalities in the world, and he’ll endorse their products by becoming their brand ambassador for the next three years. Following the news, the value of their cryptocurrency ($CHZ), rose by 30%, making it what some would say is a perfect hattrick.
But why has it made such a difference?
First into the melting pot of positivity was the detail of the partnership with Messi, a soccer legend. The Argentinian player, who was named by 90Min as the best player of the last decade, is the new face of the brand which has been leading the way in engagement between sports fans and clubs for the last couple of years. Socios is the brand that Messi now represents, and it’s not the first time that his image has caused a growth in their fortunes. Last summer, when he moved from Spanish giants Barcelona to Paris St Germain in France, the value of the fan tokens, which are bought and sold with $CHZ via the Socios.com app, rocketed by 43%. These unique utility tokens, which in this case display the image of the French club, allow fans to show off their support of their team digitally and access exclusive club votes, and polls, as well as offer a chance to potentially meet their heroes. This meant fans bought them in droves with the lure of potentially meeting the superstar being a natural attraction. Since the success of the PSG fan token, a long list of other major brands and instantly recognizable organizations have also signed up to partner with Socios. Their list of partners now stands at 130; this added interest and, of course, resulting rise in revenue has allowed Chiliz to invest in the infrastructure that powers it all.
The launch of Scoville is arguably the most significant development since the creation of the fan token for Chiliz, as it is a major upgrade of the blockchain on which $CHZ sits. Ankr, who are specialists in developing decentralized infrastructure and Web3 applications, have helped create the project. With their expertise, the two companies have combined to introduce a fully EVM-compatible platform, meaning that it has much lower gas fees that are up to as much as 200 times cheaper than ETH.
Chili Chain 2.0 (CC2), the codename for Scoville, is a secure community-driven network that will grow as Socios expands its partner roster. As a result, it will allow those organizations involved to utilize the platform to create Web3-enabled products, services, and experiences easily. Thus future-proofing their marketing plans and adding extra value to the partnership.
Although Chiliz has already made quite a stir in sports and entertainment through its digitally based offerings, it’s clear with the response to the latest batch of news and the rise in the value of $CHZ that they might have also turned up the heat on some of their competitors in the digital asset space.