Crawley Town FC embraces Web3 with NFT season tickets

What

WAGMI United, a US crypto consortium, has brought Web3 payments to Crawley Town FC (CTFC)

Why

Dubbed “the internet’s football team”, CTFC have ambitions to reach the Premier League to defy the “broken” current system

What next

Since its acquisition a few months ago, CTFC has been busy implementing crypto and NFTs to raise funds and improve the club’s finances

The story

Crawley Town, located in West Sussex England, was founded in 1896. A relatively small football club, they now have plans to sell their season tickets as NFTs. Priced at 0.3 ETH, the club receives a 7.5% fee if the ticket holder decides to sell it on. This could give the club an additional revenue stream other clubs don’t have.

By last night, the club had managed to sell just under 10,000 season tickets, equal to around £3.5 million — a significant sum for a league two side.

WAGMI United co-founder, Preston Johnson, said the aim is to “sell football to fans of NFTs and not sell NFTs to football fans”. This has certainly been the approach from other clubs. Barcelona FC, PSG and Liverpool FC have all tried their hand at selling NFTs over the last couple of years. However, sales have often been relatively low, with the clubs discovering this isn’t something football fans are ordinarily interested in. Liverpool’s NFT collection, for example, sold just 5.7% of the total collection.

Johnson’s approach could be a winning strategy by effectively decentralising where football supporters are based. In the UK, fans of smaller clubs such as Crawley are typically from or have lived in the area of the club they follow. Johnson will be hoping that by bringing NFT fans that are interested in the concept from around the world, he can create a decentralised fanbase and revolutionise football’s relationship with fans.

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