In order to track soccer balls that were used to score goals, the top Spanish soccer league, Laliga, has announced the implementation of a new system that will use blockchain. A third-party company, Gol-Ball, will supply the system that will certify these balls so that users may buy them through legitimate markets or raffles.
The Spanish Laliga will use a blockchain system to certify soccer balls
The top soccer league in Spain, Laliga, has declared that it will be among the first organisations to certify goal-scoring balls using blockchain technology. The institution has already collaborated with Gol-Ball, a different business, to put the system in place.
The system will be utilised to track each player after the World Cup in Qatar.
The system, which will go into effect following the world cup in Qatar, will track every ball used in every game, separate them out, and show which ones were used to score each goal. Previously, this was not possible because each football was rotated and mixed in with the others.
Samuel Eto’o, Laliga’s ambassador and a former soccer player, remarked on the importance of this new tech. Eto’o stated:
Normally, only after scoring a hat-trick would you receive a ball during your football career, but you could never be certain that it was the ball you used to score any of the goals. My colleagues and I would have preferred to have all of them if we could have determined which ball had scored the goal.
Markets for goal-scoring balls
According to a press release from Laliga on December 1, all fans will have access to these goal-scoring balls through “fan engaging mechanisms” that will be revealed in January. This suggests the development of secondary markets for these balls, which might be given away to fans through raffles or paid participation, creating new opportunities for fan engagement and generating income for the business.
Oscar Mayo, executive general director of Laliga, stated the following about this new link:
It serves as a link between the physical and digital worlds. LaLiga takes pride in being innovative and providing ways for our fans to feel more emotionally connected to their favourite teams and idols.
The CEO of Gol-Ball, Andres Rodriguez, also stated that fans would be able to own these balls as a digital representation, making an allusion to the issuance of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Laliga has previously partnered with Dapper Labs to release Laliga Golazos, an iconic NFT platform. This is not the first time Laliga has been involved in the launch of NFT-based platforms.