Blockchain technology has been a contentious topic in the tech world for almost a decade now. But while the proponents and detractors argue about its merits, blockchain is quietly gaining traction in many sectors, and sports is a major one of them.

The Covid-19 pandemic created an urgency to adopt new technologies that didn't previously exist in much of the sports world, with associations, leagues and clubs understanding that they would be left behind if they didn't move forward with the times. "The sports world as a whole is pretty traditional. It usually evolves at a steady, but pretty slow pace. I think that Covid-19 did to the sports business what it did for a lot of startup companies. It basically put the pace of evolution on steroids. It forced the sports organizations worldwide to rethink their strategy and their innovation and digital division," explained Melamed. "All of a sudden, one of their main revenue streams, in-venue fans, was gone. All of a sudden we were bombarded with organizations asking us, 'Hey, how can we innovate? How can we bring excitement to the fans while they're at home? How can we bring the sponsors to the fans sitting in front of the TV?' This has created a substantial paradigm shift. Even disregarding the pandemic, if you think about it, a lot of attention is focused on the venue itself, but let's take FC Barcelona as an example, they might have 100,000 fans in the stadium, but a hundred times more and maybe even a thousand times more across the world. How can you generate revenue streams from these fans? This is something that organizations have now grown to understand. They realize that they can create more revenues from the fans outside the venue, that they can interact with them, that they can cater to them with better experiences that can be provided with an implementation of technologies."

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Blockchain is making its mark in sports, and there's more to come | Ctech - CTech