FC Barcelona secures $132M investment for blockchain and NFT venture

Spanish soccer club FC Barcelona has secured a 120 million euro ($132 million) investment from Libero Football Finance AG and Nipa Capital B.V. for its Web3 initiative, Barça Vision. According to the Aug. 11 announcement, FC Barcelona sold a 29.5% stake in Bridgeburg Invest, the holding company for Barça Vision, in exchange for the capital. “Barça Vision is the Club’s initiative to integrate all digital content around Web3 and blockchain including NFTs and metaverse, which are part of the Club’s strategy to build the digital Espai Barça,” developers wrote. Libero is a publicly listed company in Germany consulting soccer clubs on financial matters. Nipa Capital is a venture capital firm domiciled in the Netherlands. The transaction is subject to the approval of FC Barcelona shareholders and is expected to close in Q4 2023. Since February 2020, FC Barcelona has partnered with the Chiliz blockchain to create Ethereum-based FC Barcelona Fan Tokens (BAR) for its sports franchise. In August 2022, Chiliz announced it had purchased a 24.5% stake in FC Barcelona’s digital content creation arm, Barça Vision, for $100 million. In May, FC Barcelona launched its first inaugural NFT collection with Plastiks. Dubbed “Unleash Your Passion,” the collection features 3,000 animal-themed NFTs at a price of $30 each that the club says will contribute to “removing 35,000,000 kilograms of plastic from our planet.” Subsequently, in July 2022, the football club sold its first NFT, “Masterpiece #1 In A Way” at Sotheby’s New York auction for $693,000. The second collectible in the series, “Masterpiece #2 – Empowerment,” was sold on OpenSea on June 28, 2023, for $300,231.