What is Chiliz (CHZ)? The Sports Fan NFT Network Explained

Chiliz is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that allows sports fans to enhance their experiences with their favourite team.

With CHZ tokens, they can purchase NFTs of their favourite team on a fan community platform. Fans can then use that NFT to gain exclusive benefits, to be active in the community, and even have direct engagement with the team.

The network and cryptocurrency changed the way fans can interact with their favourite teams, turning them from fans watching from the outside in, into exclusive and active club members.

Continue reading this article to learn more about Chiliz.

How does Chiliz (CHZ) work?

Before Chiliz, a typical sports fan may only ever watch their favourite team from a distance — watching their games alongside friends and purchasing merchandise – that’s about it.

Then comes Socios, a fan community platform where sports fans and fanatics can get early access to tickets, have club voting rights, and other exclusive benefits.

Socios integrated Chiliz’s technologies to create a decentralised ecosystem where fans can have an active presence and decision-making within their team’s club operations, especially in marketing.

It’s no surprise that modern teams are starting to listen to their fans more, as Socios help communicate fans’ desires to the teams.

Seeing a team change their uniform design?

It could have been voted most favourite by fans on Socios. Or how about their pre-game music or chant? Merchandise distribution and marketing? Fans are making a direct influence over these on the Socios platform.

By purchasing Fan Tokens, which are the team’s NFT collection, fans can also support the team financially.

A sports team or club can decide to issue a Fan Token Offering to raise funds, in exchange for exclusive rights to certain privileges.

What are ERC20 tokens?

In short, these are simply tokens that are used on the Ethereum blockchain and act as assets that facilitate the various utilities and functions on the network. Learn more with our guide.

Use cases for the Chiliz (CHZ) token

At the time of writing, Chiliz is the world’s leading sports tokenization technology, and this is true not due to some abstract parameter like blockchain network node activity.

From a business point of view, Chiliz has impressively partnered with some of the world’s most famous sports teams. To name a few, FC Barecelona, Golden State Warriors, Aston Martin Cognizant Formula 1, Juventus FC, Paris Saint-Germain are some of the big players in the ecosystem.

Fans of Juventus FC were the first fans in the world to take part in the club’s decision to change the celebration song when the players score a goal, changing from Chelsea Dagger to Song 2 by Blur.

Fans of FC Barcelona voted to choose a mural that can be seen by their favourite players in their dressing room. Paris Saint-Germain football captain wore an armband with a custom message voted by their biggest fans.

For those who don’t follow sports (like me), these actions may seem small and insignificant. But you have to consider that these are the world’s biggest and most successful sporting teams with many sponsors. For a club at that scale, they don’t depend on fans for revenue.

Contrast this to smaller sports clubs. Just like a budding musician, they depend on the support of fans to cheer them on, to spread the word around.

Of course, Chiliz and Socios aren’t limited to the sports superstars. When a small team issues a Fan Token or an NFT collection, such token sale will be immensely helpful for the team’s growth and development.

They could use the funds raised to hire better players and coaches, play in more famous stadiums, and increase the quality of life of the players in general.

History of Chilliz

Chiliz was founded in 2012 in Malta as part of Mediarex Group, an international sports and entertainment company.

Socios, on the other hand, is a related company which began work in 2018 as a blockchain-based fan community platform. Then Chiliz developed its token, the CHZ token, to raise over $66 million in a private token sale in the same year.

The two entities became synonymous when Socios integrated Chiliz’s token and technology to allow fans to purchase the first Fan Token Offering in 2019. Juventus became the first partner, which then issued 20 million Fan Tokens and sold 1.3 million of them by the end of November 2019.

For the next few years, Socios (and by extension, Chiliz) has partnered with Paris Saint-Germain, AS Roma, FC Barcelona, AC Milan, Team Heretics, UFC, İstanbul Başakşehir, Team Alliance, Universidad de Chile, The New England Patriots, Philadelphia 76er, and dozens more.

At the time of writing, Chiliz is announcing that it is a few months away from launching its very own blockchain, the Chiliz Chain 2.0.

It is a fork of the BNB Chain, and operates with a proof-of-stake-authority (PoSA) combination consensus protocol.

The blockchain will offer more value to the fan-team relationship by introducing the ecosystem’s very own smart contract and oracle network, and not having to depend on Ethereum or Binance Chain.

Chiliz (the company behind the token) was founded by Alexander Dreyfus, who is also the CEO of the company which is based in Malta.

Partnering with Dreyfus is a group of core supporters of the project — Sam Li, former VP of the NBA, Nicolas Maurer, CEO of esports team Vitality, and one of the most viewed video game streamers, Dr. DisRespect.

The takeaways

Chiliz is currently the dominant crypto in the sports and entertainment industry. This means that it has a “first mover’s advantage”.

Given that the platform has already secured some important relationships with the world’s famous sports teams, it seems difficult for competitors to come in and recreate the same success as Chiliz.

If you know the spirit of sports fans and fanatics, you’d know how much effort they’d put into supporting their team.

Chiliz has become that important bridge between fans and teams, so it will see a lot of uses in the future as it becomes widespread.

How to buy Chiliz (CHZ)?

With that being said, what are your thoughts on the Chiliz network?

The innovations that Chiliz has brought to the crypto and NFT space is undoubtedly going to continue integrating the sports community with advances in blockchain technology.

If you’re a sports fan, or a crypto enthusiast and are feeling bullish on Chiliz’s innovations, consider investing in the CHZ token.

Invest in Chiliz: Buy CHZ with Easy Crypto.

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