Galatasaray SK To Move Into Cryptocurrency Through Chiliz-powered Platform Socios.com

Chiliz, a leading sports and entertainment blockchain company,  announced a new partnership with Galatasaray Spor Kulübü, the 2018-2019 Süper Lig Champions. The Lions (Aslanlar) – the only Turkish club to have won a major UEFA competition – will join the likes of Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus, West Ham United, AS Roma and Atlético de Madrid in joining Socios.com, a first-of-its-kind, blockchain-based, influence and rewards mobile app for football fans.

Socios.com offers football fans a new way to interact and to get closer to the clubs they love through ownership of digital assets known as Fan Tokens. The Official Fan Token of Galatasaray will allow fans to vote in club-delegated polls, helping to decide on topics that the club put up for fan vote. Poll topics include new official product designs, matchday activities and in-stadium experiences, as well as sponsorship campaigns and collaborations and social media content. The more tokens a fan holds, the greater the influence they can have, and the more fans interact with Galatasaray through the app, the more rewards they can earn, competing for club-specific once-in-a-lifetime experiences and enjoying exclusive rights. In the future, fans will be able to gain access to exclusive merchandise, games and leaderboards.

The Galatasaray Fan Token will go on sale, exclusively through Socios.com, in Q1 2020 through a process known as a Fan Token Offering™ or FTO. Crypto-savvy fans can also use Socios.com’s native token, Chiliz (CHZ) – a digital currency for blockchain-backed platforms and products as well as mainstream users – which can be transferred from cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance.com, straight to the in-app digital wallet. Fiat currency purchases will be exchanged to CHZ in the app itself, meaning the process of buying Fan Tokens will be effortless and much the same as any e-commerce purchase. Thousands of Galatasaray Fan Tokens and CHZ will also be given away for free through the app’s augmented-reality geo-location feature Token Hunt.

Dorukhan Acar, Board Member of Galatasaray Spor Kulübü said: “As Galatasaray, we are very pleased to join forces with Socios.com and start an exciting journey. This new partnership opens a world of new opportunities for us with respect to our fan engagement and global reach as well as being another milestone in our digital transformation strategy.”

Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO & Founder of Socios.com said: “We know that Turkey is a very digitally savvy country – a Statista report* earlier this year indicated that the Turks are early adopters of digital innovation, including cryptocurrencies – and we also know that Turks are enthusiastic football fans. Our product combines the two greatest passions of the Turkish people and we’re delighted to partner with Galatasaray, a giant of the Turkish football scene, to offer Fan Tokens to their millions of fans. This partnership marks another great step forward in opening up cryptocurrencies and Chiliz to millions of fans around the world.”

*Source: Statista Global Consumer Survey 2019

About Chiliz:
Chiliz is a digital currency for sports and entertainment platforms. It fuels the world’s first scalable, tokenized voting platform, Socios.com where fans can buy, trade and execute voting rights in their favorite sports teams. The Chiliz project has raised $66 million from some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges and leading crypto funds in Asia, including Binance, OK Blockchain Capital and Ceyuan Ventures. Chiliz is owned by Malta-based Mediarex Group, a global sports and entertainment organisation, which was founded in 2012.

Socios.com helps football clubs achieve digital transformation through blockchain technology. Socios.com is powered by the Chiliz token ($CHZ), both an ERC20 utility token on the Ethereum blockchain and BEP-2 token on Binance Chain. Fan Tokens are specific to a team or a club, and are a finite, digital asset that provides access to an encrypted, immutable ledger of voting and membership rights ownership. The tokenized fan-voting platform uses Fan Tokens, which operate on a separate permissioned side chain. The Fan Tokens are limited in number, and are fungible, meaning their ownership can be traded, and their price is driven by the market. The platform has been developed to help sports teams increase fan engagement and achieve essential investment from fan-monetization. The venture was inspired by the fan-led management frameworks or ‘socios’ of some major football clubs. Dubbed ‘Socios 2.0’, the platform simply represents the digitisation of this model of management.