It has been less than a week since the Argentine Football Association (AFA) won the FIFA World Cup. AFA, the soccer governing body, announced a new partnership with metaverse startup Upland, in keeping with the times and keeping up with the latest trends.
With this partnership, the AFA makes its first foray into Web 3.0, with the aim of improving fan engagement and experience.
Virtual land can be purchased and sold in Upland, a popular game. There is an interesting connection between these virtual lands and real-world locations. It also has more than 3 million registered users, and the startup behind it was valued at $300 million in November 2021.
As a result of this tie-up with Upland, Argentine fans will be able to connect more closely with AFA history. They will be able to acquire digital representations of several properties of the league, including clubs, games, historical moments, and even tickets.
In addition, this would likely attract younger, Web3-focused soccer fans, as well as digital collectors. Argentine Soccer League will generate additional revenue through the sale of multiple licensed digital assets through the four-year agreement, which is the first of its kind for the AFA.
The organization that oversees the national soccer league, the Argentine Soccer Association, or AFA, is now moving into the metaverse. To allow its customers to enter the metaverse and enjoy the advantages of a deeper relationship with teams and well-known players, the organization has teamed up with Upland, a real-life mapping metaverse project.
This metaverse experience won’t be entirely one-way, though, because the site will permit fans to sell these digital assets to other people, creating a secondary market. After the national Selection won the most recent FIFA World Cup, which was hosted in Qatar, the Argentine Soccer Association hopes that this will strengthen the institution’s bond with its supporters and internationalize the domestic league.
The emerging technologies of the metaverse will be utilized by this alliance, said Claudio Tapia, President of the AFA. He stated:
With the help of this agreement, we will be able to collaborate with the top developers of cutting-edge technology and new digital goods, opening up a new revenue stream for all participating clubs. We welcome Upland to join our Association and the Argentine Professional Soccer League as a new commercial partner.
Several international soccer leagues and some of their teams have already adopted the metaverse. With agreements with Globant and Dapper Labs to increase its metaverse footprint and create markets for licensed digital products, Spain’s national soccer league, the Spanish Laliga, is already deeply involved in metaverse-related efforts.
There is no doubt that the AFA has a wide reach. The partnership with Upland also sets a precedent for other soccer associations in Latin America, given the huge number of soccer fans worldwide. In terms of global adoption, it is a major step forward for Web 3.0 technology.