SportFi’s next act: onchain markets built around match-day results

Finance Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email SportFi’s next act: onchain markets built around match-day results An area of blockchain-based finance focused on increasing fans' engagement with sports teams, SportFi uses tokens to grant access to privileges such as limited voting rights and exclusive rewards. By Jamie Crawley , AI Boost | Edited by Stephen Alpher Feb 22, 2026, 1:00 p.m. Make us preferred on Google SportFi is moving beyond fan polls and merch perks toward token designs that react to live match outcomes via smart contracts. (Damon Nofar/Pixabay, modified by CoinDesk) What to know : SportFi is moving beyond fan polls and merch perks toward token designs that react to live match outcomes via smart contracts. The next phase looks less like “loyalty points” and more like a sentiment market with DeFi primitives, like lending, staking and structured products, built around sports assets. Longer term, tokenized revenues and minority-equity exposure could turn sports’ illiquid cash flows into on-chain instruments, if regulation allows. SportFi has spent most of its life in a familiar lane: tokens that reward fandom with voting rights, perks and a thin layer of speculative trading. The next version being mapped out by some of the sector’s biggest builders suggests a more ambitious destination — one where sports become a live data feed for smart contracts, and tokens behave less like collectibles and more like programmable markets. The logic is simple: sports already produce constant, globally understood outcomes. Win, lose, qualify, get relegated — the “settlement layer” is the scoreboard. If token supply and incentives can be tied to those outcomes, SportFi starts to resemble a gamified asset class rather than a bolt-on engagement product. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy . One roadmap outlined by sports-focused blockchain firm Chiliz frames this shift as “gamified tokenomics”: match-day results would trigger mint-and-burn mechanics, for example, burning supply on wins or expanding it on losses, executed transparently through smart contracts. "Our journey is about trying to become like a sentiment marketplace above these tokens and making them available everywhere so developers can create tools where we can indeed play with these tokens as a sentiment game," Chiliz CEO Alexandre Dreyfus told CoinDesk in an interview. Dreyfus pitched it less as gambling and more as a sentiment marketplace that mirrors sport’s competitive rhythm: seasonal, event-driven and reactive to real-world performance. That matters because it changes who the product is for. Fan tokens have typically leaned on a sense of "ownership" in a team, such as voting on the colour of the club's warm-up kit and what song plays in the stadium as the players walk out. Trading activity, however, has often been driven by headline moments — signings, managerial changes, tournament runs. A rules-based, outcome-linked supply model is designed to formalize that behaviour into the token itself, making price formation and scarcity part of the match-day experience rather than an accidental byproduct. Intersection with prediction markets If that layer works, it opens the door to the next one: DeFi around sports-native assets. In practice, that means building the plumbing for tokens to be used as collateral, traded in deeper liquidity pools, or packaged into structured products, a step toward sports assets behaving like other crypto primitives. It’s also where SportFi begins to intersect with prediction markets, without trying to become one. “We are investing in making our fan tokens more gamified. So, maybe I’m betting on Polymarket that Barcelona is going to beat Paris Saint-Germain, but then maybe I’m going to hedge that by buying the fan token of Barca,” Dreyfus said. The idea is that fan tokens could become another instrument for match outcomes: a liquid, tradable expression of sentiment that can sit alongside event contracts rather than replace them. The longer-term arc is even more conventional and potentially more transformative. Sports organizations are famously asset-rich and cash-poor, sitting on valuable media rights, brand IP and stadium economics while managing volatile costs. Tokenization could turn those future cash flows into on-chain instruments, giving clubs alternative liquidity routes beyond banks and specialized funds. Decentral, a Chilliz-based protocol, is tokenizing future receivables such as broadcasting rights, allowing teams to receive stablecoin liquidity . None of this is guaranteed. Regulation will define how far SportFi can go, especially when tokens resemble gambling, as prediction markets have found out . Nevertheless, SportFi’s journey shows signs of evolving from simply putting a badge on a blockchain into using smart contracts to translate sports’ real-world outcomes and, eventually, their real-world cash flows into programmable financial markets. Sports Fan Tokens Soccer Chiliz AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards . For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy . 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