EN | From the pitch to the blockchain: tokenizing real world assets in sports | MERGE Madrid 2025

Thanks for having us. Um, I have the pleasure today to talk uh to one of the pioneers in the space, Alex Drifus from Chile. And I know the company he built is on quite a journey. So maybe for everybody in the room that doesn't know what you created and uh what the team around you built, maybe you can give us a quick historical um intro into what you guys did

and why it's pretty cool. Happy to be here. First of all, um, Chile is known by both Chile and socios.com. Uh, we are a seven-year-old company.

Uh, 250 employees. We actually have 80 people in um, in Spain and 60 in Madrid. Our second biggest office is actually in Madrid. Um, and our job is very simple. We are not here to change the world.

We are not here to change the dollars. We are not here to change the financial industry. We are just here to tokenize sports team or sports property in general. And for the last seven years, we've been working with more than 80 sports team like um FC Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, um Sevilla, Valencia here in Spain, but also Paris and Germany, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Arsenal, Manchester City, Spurs, etc., etc.

So we we are the company that created the concept of fan tokens which are not NFTs they are funible which is very important. Um and these tokens are being um treated as first cryptocurrencies even though I hate that word. uh but they were treated more like loyalty program on the blockchain uh where you as a fan. You can buy a token of AC Milan and you can not own a piece of the team not yet but you can participate and vote on decision of the club. You can win tickets, VIP experiences etc etc.

Um and on top of that or rather below that we have a layer one called Chile which is um nothing it's not the fast the fastest uh chain it's not the biggest it's just the sports blockchain. uh and we believe a lot in the uh network effect of having all of the sports team and we believe a lot in regulation and that's why sports team works uh with us.

Thanks for the intro. So can you elaborate a bit about uh why Spain? How did you end up here? What excites you about Spain? What's great about the market here and why Madrid?

Originally we are based uh we are based in Malta. Actually I've been living in Malta for the last 18 years now. uh and when we created the company created our first token chili uh it was in 2018 early 18 uh we were in Malta there was a regulatory framework there and that's how we started but then when we started to grow as a business two things happened one we needed to have to make sure we work in a regulated environment in Europe uh so we look at different jurisdiction and we were looking at jurisdiction where people employees colleagues teammate would be happy to either move uh from Malta to or uh it's easier to hire from everywhere else uh into the office. We chose uh Spain and Madrid. Spain because the local regulator was very interesting, was very educated in the space.

So that gave us a lot of confidence that it's a right place for us to invest and Madrid as a city or Spain as a country, great place to hire. Now we have 80 people in Spain. uh probably in from a crypto company, probably one of the top 10 in term like crypto dedicated um and also because we work with a lot of Spanish football teams. Um it gives a bit of a comfort and and a close relationship. Um but yeah, it's it's been a great journey.

Uh we've learned a lot in the country. We continue to invest. Uh we are in Plat Espña here. um funny enough in the next building of NBA and uh that shows as well how Madrid and Spain but Madrid especially is a European quarter European HQ for the sports industry. So for us to position oursel here was making sense.

So both sports and crypto was the decision to come here.

I think it's a very good decision. Spain is a great sports nation across not just football but tennis and all the other summer sports. Um you mentioned a bit about what you did in the past already and what you're building towards to. Can you maybe elaborate what uh the next uh evolution or the next stage of evolution for Chile is? Where is it heading to?

Is it more European? Is it global? Is it both? So we are very distributed from a business perspective. We have a team sports team from all over the world.

Um um I mean as I said we have in Spain, Italy, France, uh England and many other European countries but we're also very big in Brazil. Brazil we have the nine biggest football teams there. We have an office and working a lot with the regulator as well there. Um we are very big in Turkey or first market. Uh and then we have many initiative in in Japan for example we have a John venture with the one of the biggest financial conglomerate.

Uh same in Korea where we work with the local Google Yahoo called Never Pay. Um US is a different animal. Uh we spent a lot of money. I lost all of my hair in 2122 when we spent spent $80 million 80 in the US by signing 27 NBA teams, 13 NFL teams when we decided to launch or to try to launch uh tokens of these teams back in the years. And all of this collapsed uh in November 2022 when FTX exploded and the Biden administration decided that crypto was a uh and that should not exist anywhere in the world.

Um so we had to leave us. uh we eventually never launched anything but now thanks to the new administration uh thanks to the new chairman of the SEC thanks to a very proactive white house uh in the space uh we are finalizing our strategy in the US in order to launch uh teams I mean fan tokens from either NBA teams or NFL teams or MLS teams or whoever teams who wants to be part of that uh but they're waiting they they are the one waiting for us to get an approval aka a guidance and because you don't need a license but a guidance to issue fun tokens or a token in the US. So one of our main focus is going to be the US and that's going to happen I think Q1 Q2 next year. uh last night. Yeah, last night the chairman of the SEC said that he expect to have an exemption uh scheme or framework for innovation by December uh which will fit exactly what we are looking for meaning issuing token.

Um so now we are really like in the starting block is it the word? Yes. Uh to getting ready to launch uh these tokens next year on the Chile chain. Um and the other interesting thing we are working on a little bit more I don't know if it's more ambitious but it's more challenging uh is what we call a real world asset even though I hate that word as well um is how we become whoever is we uh how we acquire minority shares of top 10 football clubs in the world in order to tokenize them and eventually potentially merging them with the fun tokens that we have today. I'll give you an example.

Uh, Juventus. Juventus is a listed company actually. Um, you can buy your share of Juventus as a fan, as a trader, as an investor. You can buy a share of Juventus. What happen when you own $1,000 of Juventus share?

Nothing. You can just vote on the general assembly to approve the salary of the CEO, the chairman, and that's it. You can you have zero benefit, nothing whatsoever. Football clubs never pay any dividends because they always lose money. Uh so from a financial point of view there is nothing but yes you own a piece of Juventus.

That's great. Now we have a Juventus fan token since 2020 uh since 2019. What does a Juventus fan token give you? Well, it give you the right to vote on what's going to be the music in the stadium every time we score a goal. And that happened actually in January 2020 was the first vote ever we launched.

And just as a fun fact because it's funny uh so you have Juventus asking their fans actually their fan token holders to vote on what music do you want to have and thanks to Ronaldo at that time that was playing for Juventus that day which was the 6th January 2020 he scored three times back to back. So three times the music went into the stadium and that was it. That was the beginning of the story of how fun tokens made it. And if you go today in the Juventus Alliance stadium, you will hear the music that was chosen on chain by fan token holders. Now, if you merge these kind of benefits, which also are VIP boxes or jersey stuff, etc.

, etc. If you merge these benefits with an equity somehow, I'm not saying it's possible today legally, it's not. But if you finally manage to kind of merge that in in in a way you have the ultimate use case of blockchain where you have access to equity and utility and all onchain and that's what we are uh that's what we will launch in next two three years uh through the acquisition of minority shares of some of the biggest clubs in the world.

I have two questions. First do you remember the song that was played?

Yes. Song song two by Blur.

There was four different choices. uh and uh that's the one that that was chosen uh and that's for me of course as a entrepreneur it's a ultimate satisfaction but we have a lot of other cool stuff uh Galatasar for example in Turkey they ask their fans um during the the football transfer window uh we just signed that player player ABC um which number do you want him to have in his jersey between two numbers I mean that's the ultimate thing you can ask for a fan you you you don't influence the business you don't influence the sports, you should not. You're a fan. You're not a a coach. But everything in the middle can potentially be influenced by fans.

And if you do put that on chain where you have Japanese, Korean, um, Germans, Brazilian that actually do love their team, 99% of sports fan of Real Madrid here or Atletico Madrid are not in Madrid. They are everywhere else in the world. But what can you offer to a fan digitally? A voice, a power, an ownership. But you need to digitalize that.

What's your second question?

Second question was you gave example of Juventus right and it's a listed company. How would it work for a non-listed company?

Uh it would be much better. Uh for I I most of I mean we've been working in the sports space for the last seven years. Uh I think there will be no more ever ever ever IPOs uh for a sports team. Nobody likes it. Uh I mean they are not financial investment honestly.

uh they are owned by billionaires or families or P fund but they are not investment per se. US is a different animal of course. Um but we will just buy just we will negotiate with the club uh the ability to invest 100 million let's say in in one club in order to acquire five 10% of the club and then try to tokenize this and eventually merge this with our existing fan tokens and we call that fan tokens 2.0.

Can you see a difference between the market? Is there a difference between the Spanish clubs versus the British clubs, Italian clubs? What's the awareness there and how do they react to these types of new business opportunities?

Yes. Um uh UK club was more more I mean UK clubs have much more legacyish um from uh historically from a football point of view and because the Premier League is much bigger sadly from La Liga or Syria or the French league uh they are the one running the show globally from from a football perspective and that create and it's not I mean it's not our journey but um the for those who are a bit sports fan here who remember the concept of the super league which was actually created from Madrid. Um it was an interesting debate about what we call legacy fans and more casual fans. Legacy fans being the fans that are in the stadium and are the community which is true of the team and the more casual fans which are you and me traveling all the over the world just being on Twitter and and and um and social media interactive with the team and UK teams are much more scared scared of their fans legacy fans uh while they are the one who have the most incredible global fan base which they struggle to monetize. because of this kind of unbalance and competition between how should we treat treat or how should we um monetize or interact with a fund that is in my stadium every second week uh versus a fund that we will never come but is still a fund and so it's it's a it's a big difference.

Okay, that's interesting. Talking about real world asset tokenization, when you look at uh we're now in Europe, um what are the things that could support or prevent this from happening? Is there something that uh you are excited about? Is this something that you're worried about? What needs to be done?

And uh who should do it?

Uh I think if well in Europe we have Mika Ma uh it's cool but it's not enough. Uh it's actually it was very much ahead of its time. uh but now when you look of the the aggressivity sort of of the speed of execution of what US is going through um to become and the president of the US been very clear they want to be number one in the world in crypto and you know what 100% going to happen because they have a guy that really wants to make it happen here in Europe we are still in the we have very talented regulators but we don't have one uh executive that's going to say, hey, we really wants to make it happen. We are still everybody's still afraid in Europe, afraid of embracing crypto. Um, and that's what that's what will kill eventually uh opportunities.

Uh and when you go in um cryptoblockchain event like token 2049 last week um in uh in Singapore, well the crypto world which is what we're doing uh is divided between Asia and US and European or mainly spectators. uh if you look at the top 10 the top 100 uh quote unquote token in coin market cap I believe there is three or four uh European teams slash companies or token issuer so uh we we have this um oh that's a very weird French say but I'm sure it exists in English is we we used to say um US innovate uh Europe regulates and Chinese copy it's a very cliche it's a very long time ago uh but the part of we regulate versus we innovate I think it's still very true right now in the Europe uh and even though we are ahead with a regulatory framework which honestly we should be happy about uh it may going to drive more problems than it creates opportunities and tetar for example is a great example uh ter USDT the biggest distribution of US dollar in the world uh is not in Europe because the regulation does not fit that. Why? Because first we were afraid of USDT. Oh, this is bad.

It's going to kill us. Well, congratulation. You just gave an open um you just allowed USD to become the or to continue to be to become the number one currency in the world. Um so it's far away from our business of of sports. But even though regulation is an opportunity, I I think we are we have to be very very careful uh about how we embrace it.

not how we address it, how it growth because there is a risk that we're going to go back in time uh versus the US.

Can you maybe elaborate a bit? Uh we just discussed US versus EU. How is it for example in South America because you're very active in Brazil and Argentina and so on.

Very open, very inter I mean there is a regulator that you can talk a lot to which is great. It was not the case back in the years here in Spain very close but there are a lot of countries where you cannot really talk with the regulator. So that was frustrating. Um I always remember it's very specific to Brazil but was very weird but great. we had the equivalent of the SEC of German.

So the SEC of CNV I believe there or CMV or CVM. Um and he made because Phantokans in Brazil because football teams are huge in Brazil. U I'd say much more than it is here in Spain. Uh from from a cultural point of view and we we have the fun tokens of Flamingo, Corinas, Palmas, Sao Paulo, all of these biggest teams. And it became so big there that we had the chairman of this institutions, secretary of the institution making a video like this on Twitter saying that fun tokens are not securities.

Um people can buy them and it's fine and it's it's not regul it's not not regulated but it's not under the regulatory framework. Um and that was weird but that was great because at least you have a communication you have an interaction. Every country or every continent is a bit different. What frustrate me the most here in Europe uh which will impact all of us at some point is we we of course focus a lot rightfully on consumer um uh protection as we should um but it's mainly because people want to save their job uh and don't want to be fired. It's not because there is a real bigger picture understanding of what we're doing.

Uh and my biggest fear is we as a consumerf facing platform um we have an Atletico Madrid fan he want to spend 20 you know he's he's a fan of Atletico Madrid wants to spend 20 euro he wants to vote on the decision of the jersey next season or he wants to have a chance to go in the stadium uh there because we have an amazing box please come and visit um and to do to spend his 20 with his Revolute credit card or with his Bonco something credit He has to give so much he has to give so much information KYC and like the amount information to actually spend money on a rightfully regulated platform. It's too much for for the gain of the utility you get and I think we built regulation for crypto exchanges which is right but we haven't built regulation for utility platform or for platform that at some point are consumerf facing um and because we were afraid of money laundering and everything um rightfully but when it's 20 euro or 500 euro we should have low limits and one of the battle or fight I hope to fight as a as an entrepreneur and as a regulated entity which we are now in Europe uh is to actually try to promote that if we want to make this revolution happening uh we need to actually open the gates and let people come with 20 50 or 100 euro with a very low entry bar um because otherwise all the people we do not educate are the people who are actually missing out uh it's it's very arrogant what I'm going to say but we are here we are part of the people that has been very lucky to understand quote unquote crypto very early for most of us. Uh and most of us made money out of that but because we were not afraid of what we read in the media where crypto was bad evil and it's never going to work. So the more you educate the more you actually give you create wealth for for everybody. And right now we are still in a in a in a place where this wealth is unequally shared towards people who have access to knowledge.

So as we unfortunately nearly out of time, one last question. What's your wish for the future when you look at what Europe is doing and um where we should head to? Um, now that we have a great I mean that we have a regulatory framework that works. Um, I'd like less competition between countries uh with Mika, you know, we had France, I'm French, so it's the way I can say that we have France starting to complain that oh look that Malta they issue license uh blah blah blah blah blah blah the jealousy between uh European countries and regulators should not ever exist because Europe is a single market. So that makes zero sense.

Uh and that's purely ego. Uh I hope that this will disappear at some point. Uh and entrepreneur will actually make it disappear because we are the one choosing where we want to operate. Um and I hope that regulators will embrace more innovation to actually make Europe visible in the crypto space and not make us disappear.

On that note, thanks for taking the time.

Thank you very much.

Maybe a round of applause for speaker. Thanks.