Argentina’s football fan token falls 31% after a loss against Saudi Arabia

Argentina’s shocking loss to Saudi Arabia in the opening match of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar has plummeted the price of the Argentine Football Association Fan Token (ARG). It seems that the price of fan tokens, designed for the engagement of football fans, is sensitive to the on-field performance of teams.

With the ARG token priced initially at $7.21, the poor performance by the Lionel Messi-led soccer team led to the token’s price falling 31% to $4.96 by the end of the match, according to CoinGecko.

Contrary, the floor price of “The Saudis,” a Saudi Arabian-themed NFT collection unrelated to the soccer team, surged by 52.6%, from 0.196 ETH to 0.3 ETH over the same time before cooling off to a price of 0.225 ETH, about $250. According to OpenSea, the collection’s sales volume also skyrocketed 990% over the last 24 hours, almost reaching 24.5 ETH.

Despite the growing hype for the FIFA World Cup, which officially started on Nov. 20 in Qatar, crypto research firm Delphi Digital revealed that the fan engagement platform Socios’ native token Chiliz (CHZ), in line with other soccer-based tokens representing participating nations, has also cooled off significantly over the last few days.

CHZ is an ERC-20 token native on Socios, a blockchain-powered fan engagement platform that has been one of the largest contributors to the sports-fan token frenzy.

Many of the football-based tokens run on Socios, which has partnerships with some of the largest football clubs worldwide, such as Barcelona F.C., Paris Saint-Germain F.C., and Manchester City F.C.

Although the fan tokens don’t represent ownership in teams, they allow buyers to vote in some decisions made by sponsoring teams in addition to enabling access to some rewards.

Lately, the popularity of fan tokens in the sporting industry has surged, with some token sales volumes surging more than 250% month-on-month since this January.

The fan tokens are also impacted by other factors, such as the volatility in crypto markets and breaking news. For instance, the recent collapse of the crypto exchange FTX sent the price of CHZ down by 40% after the reports of the exchange’s proceeding bankruptcy.

This May, the Algorand platform became the first official blockchain sponsor for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, which is set to finish on Dec. 18.