MWC 2022: football club Barcelona reveals plans to create cryptocurrency

Spanish football club Barcelona plans to create its own cryptocurrency as it explores emerging technologies to drive long-term and sustainable business growth, its president said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

The 122-year-old team is seeking to leverage blockchain and the metaverse to achieve this goal, and will also launch its first non-fungible token soon, Joan Laporta said in a keynote address. He did not divulge further details on the planned NFT offering.

"Our goal basically is to win titles, to compete for winning and to make our fans happy. But it's true that at the same time, we have to profit," Mr Laporta said.

"The opportunities in the sports industry are very important to us; for us, it's kind of a necessity and a matter of survival, because in football we don't have a corporate or estate behind us that solves financial difficulties."

Barcelona was ranked as the world's most valuable football franchise and fourth overall in all of sports teams with a value of $4.76 billion in 2021, according to Forbes.

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Frenkie de Jong is now the top earner at Barcelona, with a weekly wage of £354,000, according to fcbarcelonalatestnews.com. That's an annual salary of £18,434,000. Getty

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Football is the world's most popular sport, estimated to be followed by about 3.5 billion fans worldwide, according to governing body Fifa. Teams – particularly in Europe – enjoy lucrative sponsorships and rake in significant revenues from ticket and merchandise sales.

However, the industry was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic: the combined revenue of European clubs dropped more than 13 per cent to £22bn ($29.4bn) in the 2019-2020 season, the first decline since the 2008 financial