Gibraltar United Football Club Will Pay Their Players in Cryptocurrencies

Even though Gibraltar isn’t known for the grand success in football, while all the emotions after the FIFA World Cup are yet to settle, Gibraltar United, the team that plays in the Gibraltar Premier Division, announced that they are introducing cryptocurrency payments to their financial system.

How Football Became Such a Business in the First Place?

As the only sport in which the better team doesn’t always win, football always carried a considerable amount of passion, emotions, but also controversy. This year’s FIFA World Cup showed that all the emotions are shared by 3.2 billion people around the world (46.4% of the world’s population), who tuned in to watch the spectacular tournament.

Where there are so many consumers, there is money.

But it wasn’t always like that. While players were always making more than decent money, the recent hundreds of millions for which some of the football stars of today are sold to the most prominent clubs were science fiction.

But when the rule which regulated that only three foreign footballers could play in a match was retracted, and the famous Bosman Ruling was enforced in 1995, the stage was set for the dance of millions.

Friendly Regulations Make Gibraltar a Perfect Test-Track

The example of Gibraltar United can be viewed as a testing platform, which will undoubtedly be carefully inspected by much wealthier clubs.

The club’s owner, Pablo Dana, invested in Quantocoin, and signed a sponsorship partnership with the cryptocurrency company, which enabled the club’s leadership to include payment agreements in cryptocurrency by next season.

Even though Gibraltar’s Premier Division isn’t even among the top 20 leagues in Europe, this innovative approach isn’t strange at all.

While the most influential European countries are still devising the strategy for dealing with the new technologies, Gibraltar was one of the first to introduce regulations for businesses using the blockchain in January 2018, and the government is currently preparing to launch the world’s first legal framework for initial coin offerings (ICOs).

“It (Gibraltar) was the first (place that) regulated betting companies 20 years back when everyone was seeing them as horrible,” said Gibraltar United’s owner. “They put compliance and anti-money laundering regulations and created a platform – they have the intelligence to do the same with cryptocurrencies,” Mr. Dana declared.

Football Giants are on The Same Path

It was also January 2018 when the 13 times English Premier League champions, Arsenal announced the sponsorship deal with the cryptocurrency company CashBet.

Not only clubs but also current and former players individually take an interest in the growing business. Lionel Messi, Michael Owen, Roberto Carlos and Luís Figo are just a few who work on promoting blockchain-based projects.

The Blockchain Technology Has the Ability to Change the Game of Football

Blockchain and the use of cryptocurrencies can lower the costs of transactions, eliminate countless intermediaries in the football business, and remove various expenses of accounting from the big picture.

According to The London Football Exchange (LFE), these lower costs present an opportunity to engage fans in new ways. Their head of partnerships, Danny Stroud, explains that the LFEs focus is to create a token-based football community, to “enable clubs to have a direct connection with fans in a frictionless marketplace.”

Along with the eventual law compliance, blockchain technology will automatise payments through smart contracts instead of using much more expansive traditional ones. The ability to prevent numerous malpractices, such as under-the-table cash payments and illegal ticket resale will enhance the overall level of transparency in the sport.

Ultimately, blockchain can become the primary data storage in the industry, holding and providing easy access to innumerable information about players, transfers, club’s spendings, training data, etc.

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