2025 Web3 x Sports Predictions
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In today's episode we will do what everyone does at the beginning of the year: We'll make some predictions.
Building upon the upwind of 2024 the whole industry is set to probably have quite a good year. That's the perfect foundation for some wild and less wild guesses.
My Top 5 guesses - Let's get this started.
1) It will finally be the year of Web3 Loyalty in sports
Web3 loyalty has had quite a tough and interesting 2024. Nike and Starbucks, the (ex-)biggest players in this category winded down their offering. Hugo Buss but also sports rights holders such as the ATP or Cleveland Cavaliers on the other hand provided very interesting case studies.
I just really think that Web3 loyalty has so much potential, especially in sports. Just think about it. Sports fans are already the most loyal group of "customers" out there. They consume the core product, the content in which way or form ever, and are keen to spend their most valuable resources, time, love and passion.
So technically making ones fans more loyal isn't the opportunity here.
It's the missing direct relationship between fans and their beloved sport teams. So many rights holders rely on intermediaries. The biggest teams may have hundreds of millions of followers on various social media channels. They may also have millions of people watching their game every week. What they don't have however is a direct relationship with most of their fans (think 1-3% of their social media following) - not to mention that stadiums rarely fit more than, say, 60,000 fans.
There's a huge opportunity for opportunity for direct and indirect monetisation there. Sport teams "just" have to turn their still anonymous fanbases into known "customers". Plus, there's still a lot of opportunity for engaging fans digitally.
Onchain "loyalty programs" are imho a great solution to this specific problem set - with a lot more potential to do fun stuff down the line.
2) Onchain ticketing will have its breakthrough
Maybe a little riskier one. The industry has talked a lot about blockchain-based ticketing, even before 2020 and 2021. And, the case still makes a lot of sense (think fraud prevention, an easier to use infra for secondary markets, back to a piece of memorabilia....). But especially commercial hurdles have prevented success so far. Huge players (e.g. Ticketmaster) are able to pay huge sums to partners that startups can only dream of. Then there is some complexity to wether a deal is being done with a team or the venue. And last but not least there are many deals in place that still last for years.
However, since SI Tickets (from the Sports Illustrated "family") has inked a 13 year deal with New York Red Bulls that also includes onchain ticketing from 2026 on, it felt like a more optimistic sentiment.
I may have been the headline that was needed for onchain ticketing. But having already made a similar prediction for 2023, I wouldn't bet my life savings on it.
3) Web3 Gaming will remain highly relevant in sports
In 2024 we have seen the likes of Philadelphia 76ers, LPF and Man United launch some kind of Web3 game. Beyond that NFL Rivals has had quite a successful year and FIFA & PGA Tour have announced that they will too launch a game with onchain aspects soon.
So, we already know that two rights holders with great following will probably launch a Web3 game some time in 2025 - almost a no-brainer to predict that. But I think we will see even more games with onchain stuff being launched by sport teams and leagues in collab with their sponsors.
Beyond that I am hoping to see some kind of collision of what we have talked about in the loyalty prediction and gaming. I am thinking about simple ideas like being able to unlock traits and stuff by collecting free digital memorabilia in a "loyalty program".
4) Two pro teams add memecoin as main jersey sponsor
That's probably a little more bold one...
Sheffield United has signed MANEKI (a memecoin) as the main jersey sponsor this season. Beyond that a range of memecoins have signed a range of sponsorship contracts this year (BVB, Udinese Calcio, Nottingham....).
Memecoins have also had quite a hype in the past few months. Many of them have been created, many of them have gone bust since, but some have also reached hundreds of millions and even billions in market cap. Many of them want to get more popular and also quite a few have leveraged sports sponsoring to do so.
Combined with a number of teams looking for jersey sponsor for a little longer, there may be an opportunity for memecoins.
I am not saying that I am a fan of these deals, but based on my thoughts above I think this might be a case for 2025. One of those deals will happen in England and another one in Italy.
5) Ending partnerships will further reshift the market
We have already seen the impact of ending blockchain partnerships. That's true for both the brand world (probably Starbucks and Nike) but also for the world of sports. This was probably one argument for DraftKings to discontinue Reignmakers.
McLaren has had its wildly successful "23/23" digital collectibles campaign with Tezos, who weren't a sponsor anymore for the 2024 season. McLaren therefore set up a similar program with a new sponsor - crypto exchange OKX.
FC Bayern, afaic, never launched their digital collectibles programme because their partner was liquidated before their mutual work was released.
Overall, blockchains are not as interested anymore to pay huge sums of money to make such deals happen. The same is true for service providers that weren't able to break even.
This is definitely not a wild guess, but I think in 2025 we will continue to see new stakeholders (or none) pick up the check for Web3 activities of clubs.
Some links to news, podcasts and reports that have appeared on my radar lately: