The Bundesliga club, Eintracht Frankfurt FC has announced a new collaboration with the blockchain fantasy football platform, The Football Club (TFC).
This new agreement is TFC’s first in the league and is expected to provide the club with the capabilities that are needed to build relevance and attract attention in the emerging web3 space.
TFC is a football manager game that has evolved into a fully functional, metaverse-compatible mobile app and NFT marketplace that combines football and blockchain technology.
The free-to-play game pits players against teams custom-made for them, with football players from the First and Second Bundesliga divisions available to select and add to a squad. The metaverse feature introduces various virtual reality niches, such as interacting with other fans in virtual stadiums or participating in various challenges that add to the experience points gained from playing matches.
Furthermore, the virtual TFC marketplace will provide fans with the opportunity to purchase limited NFT (Non-fungible Token) Eintracht Frankfurt merchandise, as well as more digital, club-specific assets and different lifestyle products as the partnership progresses.
TFC, which was founded in Munich in 2020, has stated that it hopes to mobilise the Bundesliga for the digital revolution by partnering with more German teams in the future.
Ante Kristo, Managing Director of TFC, said, “We launched our project in the middle of the corona pandemic because we are convinced that new digital interaction formats between sports fans and their favourite brands and clubs are more relevant than ever and have huge growth potential. We are very pleased to have Eintracht Frankfurt as one of the most digital and well-known German football clubs for our new platform and are grateful for the trust that Eintracht places in us.”
Timm Jäger, Managing Director of EintrachtTech GmbH, the subsidiary of Eintracht Frankfurt Fußball AG, commented, “The dynamics in the virtual world are enormous. Sport, in general, plays an important role as a lifestyle trendsetter due to its cross-target group orientation. Eintracht Frankfurt has already set a benchmark in the field of digital sports at an early stage with its own eSports training centre. We are always interested in offering our fans the latest future topics in Eintracht club colours. A new, virtual marketplace – we are very pleased to open and play it for the fans of Eintracht Frankfurt and to integrate it into our Eintracht app ‘mainaqila’ in the future.
“The digital world changed our communication behaviour a long time ago. The fact that we now have virtual sports and marketplaces, different customer approaches and contact opportunities spurs us on to make innovative offers to our fans very early and very precisely that are fun and sustainable. Analog and digital complement each other perfectly at Eintracht.”