Argentine Football Association Strikes Metaverse Deal After World Cup 2022 Success

The Argentine Football Association (AFA) has entered into a partnership with Upland, a Silicon Valley-based company, to bring the Liga Profesional de Fútbol (LPF), Argentina's professional football league, into Upland's virtual platform.

The collaboration will enable Argentinian football fans, teams, and players to connect with each other through digital collectibles, including teams, clubs, players, tickets, highlights from games, historical moments, and other special offers.

This partnership is a first for Upland, as it will give the company exclusive ownership of highlight videos from LPF matches. The sale of non-fungible tokens featuring licensed digital assets will provide a new source of income for the Argentinian football league.

As part of the partnership, users of Upland's platform will be able to start virtual businesses to sell LPF digital collectibles in their own virtual shops located on virtual properties.

According to Cointelegraph, the agreement with the Football Association comes on the back of Upland’s partnerships with Portuguese topflight outfit FC Porto as well as FIFA itself. The latter agreement saw Upland offer licensed digital collectibles for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which included highlights from the recently completed tournament.

Sports, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain have become increasingly interconnected in recent years. In August 2022, Formula 1 filed trademarks for NFT and cryptocurrency-related goods and services, and teams such as McLaren and Red Bull Racing have explored their own Web3 and NFT offerings.

Fan token platform Socios has continued to grow, despite challenging market conditions and cryptocurrency exchange OKX has also increased its marketing efforts and signed a sponsorship deal with Manchester City, the current English Premier League champions.

Portugal's national team captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, also entered the world of Web3 through a partnership with Binance to launch a series of NFT collections in a multi-year deal.