Football star Lionel Messi, known as one of the game’s greatest players of all time, has reportedly made crypto fan tokens a part of the payment deal in his financial package with French club Paris Saint-Germain.
He had been at FC Barcelona since he was 13 and this week he signed a two-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain. His departure from Barcelona, with which he won four Champions League titles, was sealed after Spanish La Liga’s financial fair play rules made it fiscally unviable for the club to continue to afford him.
A winner of the European Golden Shoe award for top scorer and FIFA’s player of the year award six times each and will reportedly net an annual salary of $41 million in addition to a $30-million signing bonus at PSG.
With the exact details still shrouded in secrecy, the allocation and terms of the inclusion of crypto fan tokens in Messi’s contract are unknown. Fan tokens continue to be popular in global sports, with major Turkish multi-sport club Fenerbahçe S.K. completing an initial presale of 500,000 tokens on Ethereum this week, netting the club $1.75 million in 30 seconds.
Flash sales for fan tokens are undeniably lucrative for the clubs involved and became even more prevalent during the pandemic-induced lockdowns last year as a way to enhance clubs’ digital presence, boost revenue and maintain fan engagement. Yet critics of the model have argued that the voting rights associated with token ownership offer fans little more than a cosmetic say in clubs’ operations and represent a gratuitous monetization of fan engagement.
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