SL Benfica and Football Company establish Digital Merchandising partnership

Sport Lisboa e Benfica and Football Company have entered the 2022/2023 season as partners. To kick off the partnership, Benfica and TFC dropped the three jersey types of Benfica as digital items for the 2022/23 season. The first and second drop sold out in minutes.

Fans of the club will not only be able to purchase the jersey and numerous fan articles in fan shops, but also as a digital jersey in the metaverse.

The Metaverse of Football Fandom - this is how The Football Club itself describes the company's vision. The aim is to bring the international fan world together in the digital world and give the fans closer access to the club. The focus is on linking digital and real objects: for example, a digital jersey can mean the activation for a ticket in the stadium. You can simply get access to those benefits by playing challenges inside the app of The Football Club.

Benfica is the first club from Portugal to take part in this development and to set new standards by entering the digital fan world. Apart from the goal of connecting the real and the digital world, a main component of TFC was to create a sustainable product. Therefore TFC has already partnered with several clubs from Germany and Switzerland. All drops including digital jerseys were sold out within a few hours. In those drops, users can acquire bags which include these digital jerseys. Each of these bags contains three jerseys while the items will be available in different levels of rarity, providing different benefits for each fan.

Benfica was also the first club to make 3 different bags available.

On October 6, 2022, the first Benfica x TFC drop took place on the official TFC marketplace. It was the first time that TFC offered three different types of bags including digital jerseys: Starter bags, Base bags and Pro bags. Each bag included three digital jerseys in different scarcities. This new bag structure and the power of the TFC x Benfica community caused a quick sell out. Due to this huge success, Benfica and TFC decided to make a second drop less than one month after the first ones.

New releases are coming soon and fans will still be able to buy three different types of bags. Each bag includes 3 jerseys with different scarcities  and of all the players in the SL Benfica squad.

Miguel Bento, CMO of Sport Lisboa e Benfica, states: "Benfica has been betting on digital as a privileged way to bring fans closer to the Club. The partnership with Football Company represents another path of innovation in the digital world."

Ante Kristo, CEO of Football Company, highlights: "Our goal as football fanatics is to respect the heritage and culture of football while using cutting-edge technology to create the most authentic and advanced virtual football experience for our users. Benfica is helping us to best combine real and digital benefits for fans to take the attractiveness of digital football to a new level."

The Football Club is The Football Company's first product where users can buy and trade officially licensed digital merchandise and lifestyle items. They can use these to equip their avatar or participate in various fantasy sports challenges.

The Football Club creates a long-lasting digital ecosystem for fan communities, simplifying the entry into the metaverse. TFC's vision is to combine the power of web 3.0 with real life experiences for fans. Since the launch of the product in 2021, numerous clubs have already been won as partners.