What Is SportyCo and Will It Change the Sports Industry?

in #investing7 years ago (edited)

Sportcoimage - ckcryptoinvest.png

What do Johnny Manziel, Gerard Pique, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. all have in common?

From a strictly sports perspective, "Johnny Football", the Catalan soccer star, and NASCAR legend couldn't be farther apart from another. But there is an underlying thread that ties their stories together.

They were all born into wealthy families.

Of course, this doesn't discount their enormous athletic talents - the records speak for themselves on that account. But having the financial security needed to focus on sports as a full-time occupation certainly made a difference.

Not every athlete gets the magic opportunity to fund their training and participate in the competitions that earn them the titles they need to thrive. For every Lebron James or Cristiano Ronaldo - well-known for facing humble origins and hardships on their way to stardom - there are thousands of supremely athletes who simply never make it.

But what if you could invest in an athlete or a sports organization the same way you invest in the stock market?

SportyCo seeks to remedy this situation by leveraging the crowdfunding investment power of the blockchain to give people the ability to invest in athletes at the outset of their career. The decentralized cryptocurrency sport platform uses tokens to represent users' investment in the careers of the athletes they support, breaking open the high barrier to entry into the modern sports industry.

How Does SportyCo Work?

Sportyco - claire - ckcryptoinvest.png

SportyCo describes its operation workflow through the use of an example case - Claire.

Claire is a promising tennis player whose professional training regimen is slated to cost almost $80,000 over the next three years. Claire agrees to make SportyCo her primary backer, allowing her to focus on training in exchange for 25 percent of her income for the next 10 years.

Through SportyCo's crowdfunding sport platform, she manages to reach her goal and, only a few short years later, reaches the Wimbledon semi-finals and is ranked in 7th place. She earns sponsorship contracts of $1.5 million per year for the next five years, entitling her investors to their share in her profits.

Importantly, the terms of Claire's participation and the agreements between her and her investors are built into a decentralized cryptocurrency system using smart contracts represented by tokens. SportyCo athletes can choose to share their future image rights, future sponsorship proceeds, commercial rights relationships, and transfer rights with investors in order to have their budding careers financed.

The smart contract system is based on the Ethereum network, giving it a robust foundation for automatically enforceable smart contracts. This makes the ICO investment more secure against fraud and wrongdoing than other crowdfunding services can be - the contract's terms and the athlete's token are essentially inseparable. There is no chance that Claire will simply decide not to pay back her sponsors.

Does It Work?

The platform on March 30th, 2018, giving potential investors the ability to buy into the value of the Ethereum-based SPF token during the ICO investment phase. This token is the medium of exchange on the SportyCo platform. It is convertible to all major fiat currencies on several popular exchanges, including Kucoin,Okex, HitBTC, LiveCoin, and EtherDelta.

It is too early to tell whether SportyCo will succeed in its mission to disrupt the world of sports financing, but the implementation of smart contracts to an industry with historically high financial barriers to entry is a promising approach.

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Awesome post!!

Very interesting idea. I’ll be thinking about this, but as always I gotta do my own research in the development team, Whitepaper, etc. Can’t blame me for knowing what I’m buying! But it would be really cool to see this as a success. My question is, why not just pay that athlete in bitcoin?

Yes, great question. :) Well, I think some projects need a platform where you can find others, to have at least an overview. It would be great to pay them in Bitcoin that´s true, but I think that the developers need some money as well, nobody is going to work for free. Decentralized in this case is more about investing in the different athletes, and that everybody can do participate. At least in my opinion. That´s why I like the project, and it´s not getting that much attention. The platform is launching soon, which is great. :)

Hmmm, I see what you mean. Of course not, nobody works for free! But what does the investor get out of the deal? Is it kinda like a sponsorship? A charity to a particular athlete?

Yes, it says in the whitepaper that Donating and Investing are possible. Not sure if they will be paid in Tokens or in Fiat.

Investors will be able to invest into athletes, teams, clubs or other sport organizations and in
exchange for an upfront investment receive, for example:
» a share of future image rights of an athlete;
» a share of future sponsorship proceeds;
» commercial rights relationships;
» a share of transfer rights;
» other athletes’ economic rights.

Well, it´s operating more like an "intermediary" but I think some projects need still some kind of intermediary because otherwise, it will be impossible to match them perfectly together. But just my opinion ;)

I guess I should read the whitepaper before asking questions 🙄 But thanks for the info anyways! It’s interesting to me because I was an athlete growing up but couldn’t afford to really excel in sports outside of the school year because joining a club team is out of pocket. I still managed to win state twice in wrestling and was an honorable mention in USWrestler magazine, but I know I didn’t reach my full potential due to money situations. So this idea and if this platform launches like planned, I think it could due very well. The only problem is getting awareness of this platform to the public, and people not truly understanding what blockchain can provide as one of my blogs “The Crypto Rise” goes into. But I think this will work itself out overtime.

Yes, you should :D. Anyway, you are the perfect example that the platform could do very well :).

This may be a crowdfunding project that will help aspiring sportsmen & women reach their goals with the optimal level of financial support to access suitable coaches, training regiments, access to tournaments, adequate equipment and nutrition. Could be an interesting project for sports oriented investors!

This info really make sense. But do some one has to be in a team before he/she can gt sponsored? There ar people with talent bt have no team or

No there is no need to be in a team. SportyCo will help him get better club.

upvoted. nice post. upvote my blog

I've been ready for this since the early 2000s.

awosemo fos, very good information

Interesting article, very thought provoking

we will wait and see a very good application. @titanik fallow