Argentine Soccer Association AFA Partners With Upland to Enter the Metaverse

The Argentine Soccer Association, AFA, has partnered with Upland, a virtual world platform, to introduce its fans to the metaverse. Upland will allow Argentine fans to have a bigger connection with AFA history, presenting the opportunity to acquire digital representations of several properties of the league, including clubs, games, historical moments, and even tickets.

The Argentine Soccer Association, AFA, the institution that manages the national soccer league, is now entering the metaverse. The organization has partnered with Upland, a real-life mapping metaverse project, to allow its users to enter the metaverse and experience the benefits of a closer connection with teams and celebrated players.

According to a press release issued by the AFA, Upland’s partnership will include digital representations of all the teams of the league, including players, tickets, games, historical moments, and exclusive moments of the platform. This will also ostensibly allow the league to attract younger, Web3-focused fans, and digital collectors from the soccer world, as well. The four-year deal is the first agreement of the AFA of this kind and aims to bring additional revenue to the Argentine Soccer League through the sale of multiple licensed digital assets.

However, this metaverse experience won’t be only unidirectional, as the platform will allow the resale of these digital collectibles by the fans, establishing a secondary market. The Argentine Soccer Association expects this to improve the relationship that the institution has with its fans, and internationalize the national league after the national Selection won the FIFA World Cup, recently held in Qatar.

Claudio Tapia, President of the AFA, celebrated this partnership because it will take advantage of the metaverse’s emergent technologies. He stated:

This agreement allows us to partner with the best creators of technology and new digital products and thus generate a new source of income for all participating clubs. We welcome Upland as a new commercial partner of our Association and of the Argentine Professional Soccer League.

Other soccer leagues of the world, as well as some of their teams, have already jumped on the metaverse bandwagon. The Spanish Laliga, the national soccer league in Spain, is already immersed in metaverse-related initiatives, having established partnerships with Globant and Dapper Labs to expand its metaverse presence and establish markets for licensed digital products.

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