Everyone who watches sports has probably had the same experience. Sometime after the third commercial break, as you sit in your Official Man Utd Fan Apparel during the BroughtToYouByHeineken Cup and watch Messi kick the ball past the placards for MasterCard towards the ads for Nike underwear, you think to yourself: “This is really fun, but I wonder if there’s a way for them to make more money from it?”
It turns out that you’re not alone. A trio of Barcelona soccer veterans has recently introduced an app that combines the hype of ICOs with the intoxicating exuberance of football. Or is that the wrong way around?
The App, called Olyseum, was founded by Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta, and Iván de la Peña. Described in a press release as a “sports social network created by idols, for fans,” the founders were motivated to create the sports-focused social network “with the goal of forging closer relationships with their fans.”
Tinder just wasn’t cutting it.
Olyseum was officially launched in 2016, with the intention of becoming an “online sports Coliseum” in which fans could have “meaningful” interactions with their athletic heroes. It was originally launched in Spanish, and was the most-downloaded app in six countries.
But it seems that something was missing from the first launch, and that something was money. Did I say money? I meant blockchain. And money.
Clearly, the one thing missing from the “Social network for sports” was a transparent, distributed ledger that can never be changed. That may not seem intuitive, but perhaps in the cheating-heavy world of professional sports, an immutable record without trusted third parties really is necessary.
One of the most important things about investing is researching the team, and in this case it’s easy: besides the three footballers who founded the company (combined net worth estimated in excess of $200M), Olyseum only has two other employees: there’s CEO Charles Grenoir, a PhD candidate who specializes in “development of intelligent systems, the study of computer viruses and hacktivism.” Below him is Kevin Mitnick, modestly introduced as “the most famous hacker in the world.”
Their office parties must be fun.
At Crypto Briefing, we’re not really in the business of critiquing something we haven’t tried, so we headed to Google Play to give the app a test drive. Here’s what Olyseum can deliver, courtesy of the most famous hacker in the world:
Well, that was fast.
There’s still one thing missing. As we’ve already learned this year, no blockchain cash grab is complete without its own Monopoly money. While there’s no explicit mention of a token offering, there are enough hints that you know what’s coming. “We intend that every idol has their own community to have personalized interaction, exchange products and services, and rewards for their fanbase,” says the Olyseum website. “Idols can increase their revenues and finally retribute fans through Olyseum’s native Reward System.”
So there you have it: Olyseum is the blockchain that will finally tokenize David Beckham’s kids.
To the moon!
(The Moon brought to you by Nissan, in association with Metlife Insurance and Depend Adult Diapers.)
The author is invested in cryptocurrencies, but does not currently hold any retired Spanish footballers in his portfolio. And yes, the J-League counts as retirement.
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