“Sports industry” has gradually emerged in our lives in recent years. The combination of sports and commerce seems to be different, but in fact there are inextricable connection between them.

A professional athlete and a professional club, their IP can be linked to commercial operations. It is an important part of the sports industry to develop sports IP so that it becomes well known or maximizes value. Most importantly, the benefits of developing sports IP are not limited to that, fans also can benefit from the successful development of sports IP.

For players, if their IP can be developed, his popularity and fan amount will be effectively improved. The most direct benefit of this kind of promotion is that the player can obtain more economic benefits, such as advertising endorsements and commercial presence can bring considerable income to the players.

However, there also exist many disputes arising from the use of player’s IP. Some commercial organizations have the act without players’ authorization and misuse player’s IP, causing considerable losses to both parties’ rights and benefits. Among them, the most famous case is the incident of Ronaldo’s ‘Golden Throat’ endorsement in the early years.

On August 2nd, 2003, Ronaldo was participating in the “Real Madrid China Tour” event in Beijing. During this time, he was invited by a “middleman” to attend a private banquet. Originally it was promised to take a few pictures and give it hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Ronaldo was asked to wear a jersey with “Golden Throat” and took a photo with a box of medicine. Then the photo was made into an advertisement and aired on CCTV for a full 3 years.

In fact, Ronaldo did not sign any terms of commercial cooperation with the “Gold Throat Group”, and that was caused by opaque process. Afterwards, Ronaldo was very angry and accused the Golden Throat Group and CCTV. However, finally it ended without result, because he worried that it will make advertisement for them again.

The culprit that caused the “Ronaldo+Golden Throat” incident can be said to be caused by the “opaque process”. Ronaldo is not clear about the process and purpose of the party at the “private party”. The most critical issue is the “middleman”. He has not considered the player for his own privacy. Will a responsible middleman let Ronaldo attend such a dinner?

This kind of abuse of sports industry IP behavior, the loss caused to the professional team is incalculable, and it can even be said to be worse than the “Ronaldo + Golden Throat” incident, which is obviously more obvious is fake goods. Each brand sells sponsored club’s jersey and the club also shared benefits. If fans are greedy for cheaper to buy the fake, it is bound to affect the genuine sales.

In the summer of 2015, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan competed in the Shanghai Stadium, China. The match between the two giant clubs ignited the fans’ enthusiasm. Some businessmen also figured out its business opportunities. The small stalls selling soccer fan products around the Shanghai stadiums on the day can be said to be everywhere.

Although this reflects the prosperity of China’s fan culture, the managers of Inter Milan and Bayern Club, especially Rummenigge, are all annoyed by these fan products for sale are clearly fake. The two major clubs have come to China for playing tournaments for thousands of miles. They naturally hope to obtain more economic benefits. The existence of this piracy has caused the loss of the club to some extent.

The most important thing is that the harm caused by piracy and the fake is also two-way, the majority of fans are also victims. Many fans who want to support the team purchasing clubs goods are bewildered by the jumble of the fake on the Internet. Even some merchants confuse the fake goods directly with the genuine price to be confusing, so the fans’ concerns also make the channels for supporting the team through the purchase of genuine peripherals become narrower and narrower.

It is true that the development of various sports IPs seems to be hot, but in actual practice it is a mess, and various “blackcase work”. The “Ronaldo + Golden Throat” incident is by no means a single case, and almost every year there are players who have been rumored in court for commercial disputes. Correspondingly, the fans community that sports IP development really faces are also often victim. So, is there any solution to this problem?

Imagine that there is an operating platform that can make the process of sports IP development transparent and standardized, and fans can use her to get what they really want, many problems will not happen again. The occur of “BlockcChain” technology now provides technical support for the construction of similar platforms.

“Blockchain “ is an intelligent peer-to-peer network that uses distributed databases to identify, disseminate, and document information. It is also known as the Value Internet. After various kinds of information are uploaded, they cannot be arbitrarily changed, and the materials and operations are transparent and decentralized. It is appropriate to use this platform to operate sports commercial IP development.

Nowadays, the SportX ecological chain platform equipped with the “BlockChain” technology will be available. She can not only resolve various opaque “black case workons” in sports commercial IP development, but also greatly simplify the previously cumbersome business processes. The SportX platform will release an athlete-specific token that will make the portrait rights more transparent and broadly distributed.

The price of the exclusive token can better reflect the true value of the IP after the secondary market. At the same time, wider distribution of portrait rights holders leads to more commercial development chances and accelerates the amplification of IP value.

In addition, the interests of fans participating in the sports industry will also be effectively guaranteed in the SportX ecosystem. As shown in the following figure, suppose an original designer wants to design a T-shirt with a Kaka portrait. This process must be authorized by Kaka himself in the platform. The key is that this type of product can be used for crowdfunding development. Users who hold Kaka tokens can use crowdfunding to express their support for development. Once the minimum amount is reached, related T-shirts can be put into production and sell.

In this way, the football-related goods sold through the SportX ecological chain platform must be authorized by the players themselves or the clubs. In this case, the goods can be promised not to be fake, and the benefits of fans can be well protected. It is also worth mentioning that the SportX platform will have related shopping malls, and the channels for fans’ friends to obtain peripheral products will also be broadened.