Spanish LaLiga, one of Europe’s most popular football leagues, has announced plans to implement Web3 technology into its competition.
Starting 2023, the football institution says the new system, provided by Gol-Ball™, a third-party company, will use blockchain for tracking soccer balls that were used to score a goal. It will certify these balls to allow users to purchase them through official markets or raffles.
Disclosed in a press statement, LaLiga confirmed the technology will go live soon after the conclusion of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It will be used to recover game balls and identify the balls that were kicked to score goals, “something that no league in the history of professional football had until now, and even less to deliver it to fans.”
LaLiga is making it possible for the most valuable element of the game, the ball with which a goal is scored, to be in the hands of those that love the competition by offering the full official collection of physical Gol-Ball™, at very affordable prices via fan engagement mechanisms that will be disclosed on January 8th.
Cameroonian star, Samuel Eto’o, and former Barca scorer commented on the groundbreaking technology. The La Liga ambassador said;
“Throughout my career as a footballer you would normally be given a ball only after scoring a hat-trick, but you were never sure it was the ball you actually scored any of the goals with. If we had been able to identify the goal-scoring ball, my colleagues and I would have wanted all of them.”
The CEO of Gol-Ball™, Andres Rodriguez, also spoke on the new technology;
“We replaced the auction and bidding of a few with the collaboration of many. We are proud that all our fans can have access to these collectibles, both in its physical and digital form. This is what Web3 inspires: If we contribute a little between many, we can achieve much more than when one single person puts it all.”
Rodriguez declared that fans will be able to have these balls as a digital representation, hinting at the issuance of NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Laliga has also been involved in the launch of NFT-based platforms before, establishing a partnership with Dapper Labs in October for the release of Laliga Golazos, a memorable moment NFT platform.
The football institution introduced LaLiga Tech in 2014, which offers a unique range of services to digitally transform sports and entertainment, under a single data-based ecosystem.
Just recently, it partnered with Globant Partners to expand LaLiga Tech and assist with Web3, Metaverse, Gaming Growth.
