I Bought a Blockchain Football Team!

I’ve been looking more and more into NFTs - I really do think it’s an exciting space.

While the collectible NFT aspect is exciting, I really like the idea of usable NFTs. I think gaming is a great way to get into NFTs.

(if you don’t know a lot about NFTs…. This is the best video on the topic that I’ve seen)

Regarding soccer, the biggest platform has been. Sorare - the NFT Fantasy Soccer platform. But to be honest, I kinda hated my time on Sorare. I know some like it, and that’s cool - but it just wasn’t my thing.

Then, I heard of a really cool horse racing NFT called Zed. Basically, you own a horse stable and can buy/race/breed horses.

It seems really cool but way too full on for me - and like most other NFT projects, by the time I’d heard about it, shit was way too expensive for me.

Hearing about (and looking at) Zed my first thought went to how cool a Football Manager NFT game would be where you own your club, buy players, earn revenue, scout players, take part in a real transfer market with in-game currency.

That’s it….. That’s how I’m going to make my millions!

Anyway, I soon realized that I’m way too dumb to create anything like that - so I did some Google-ing and found a few options of games that already exist.

In this article, I’ll look at the options, and which ones I’m trying out.

The Options

There were three options that I found:

• Footbattle: Seemed pretty cool, but didn’t look like a good enough game for me. I signed up and got started, but it seemed a little cartoony for me. I’ll keep tabs on it though.

• Soccer Manager Elite: There were some really cool parts here - some really unique stuff. In this game, there were a finite number of teams available to manage. Basically, you can be a club owner, manager, or agent. As a manager, you can get hired and fired from clubs and earn a salary. You could use your in-game currency to buy shares in clubs (or players) and earn a dividend on their earnings. You can also be an agent, working out deals with clubs. If you own shares in a club, you have a say in big decisions like who the manager is etc… This was a cool concept, but it wasn’t really what I was after at this stage - It didn’t seem like you really owned anything here (you also had to download a game to install on your computer… ain’t nobody got time for that). Again, I’ll keep tabs on this.

• Rabona: Rabona was probably a little smaller than Soccer Manager Elite. It was more of a ‘you create the club and grow it’ type vibe - which is what I was after. There wasn’t the best in-game management (which we’ll get into) but there was a lot that I liked.

Looking at the options, I decided to give Rabona a try.

What Is Rabona.io?

Rather than give a half-assed summary of the game, here’s the release direct from the creators of the game.

In Rabona, you manage a fictional soccer club. Your job is separated into different roles:

You take on the role of the head coach of your team. You decide, what your team is focussing on during training, which formation is played in the next match and which player plays in which position.

You decide how to build and develop your team. You scout new players, sign players which are freely available on the market, buy and sell players on the transfer market, extend contracts with existing players or end them.

You manage the financials of your club. You make financial decisions such as the expansion of your infrastructure, decide on ticket prices or the prices for merchandising goods as well as beer and bratwurst in the catering outlets of your stadium. You can invest into your youth academy to improve the scouting efficiency and sign marketing deals with potential sponsors of your team.

You decide, which role your club will play. You can play it oligarch style by investing a lot of money first to get to the top more quickly or decide on being a club focused on the development of new talent, which can then be sold to other clubs. Both might prove to be successful - if you play it smart.

Sounds pretty sick, hey.

Here are some other things to know.

• The game runs on HIVE, which is basically a decentralized social media platform/forum… but also its own blockchain

• The in-game management is basically non-existent at this stage. You can set a lineup before a match (it’ll automatically pick your strongest side by player overall scored if you don’t pick a lineup), but that’s really about it.

• However, this isn’t all bad - Matches are every six hours! So that means that you can’t have anything that’s too full-on. I don’t know why matches are every six hours, but it means that a season lasts about a week. It goes super fast. I’m not sure if I love the frequent matches, or hate them yet - but it certainly moves along fast.

• You can “freeze” players - this basically turns them into a collectible. You can’t use them in games, but their salary won’t count on your books, and the player won’t age.

Why Play?

First thing - I’ve found the game to be super fun. It’s simple, but there’s enough going on to keep my interest so far.

At the moment, the prices to play are pretty low compared to other NFT games. You’ll need to spend $5 USD to get a starter pack that’ll set you up with 11 players and the bare minimum. From there, you can earn money - or, if you want, you can spend more to speed up the progress.

That’s a lot different compared to a lot of popular NFT games, where it seems like you need a few grand just to walk in the door.

The Future?

Rabona is only about six months old - so it’s still a baby when it comes to these games. In fact, a bunch of people who play the game were really surprised that I found it!

At this stage, the developers haven’t really looked at it expanding past the HIVE community, although, a message dropped in the discord earlier this week that said there was an announcement about future plans coming up soon - so we’ll wait and see.

But my mind goes to plenty of places with a game like this.

There’s no reporting that any of these can/will ever happen, but there are so many possibilities and so many directions my mind goes.

The obvious opportunity is having team and player licenses. I don’t know how achievable that is, but that would be insanely cool.

You could have the chance to:

• Buy a part of a real club and earning dividends made from their online matches

• Your team could draw against, say, Real Madrid, in a cup game

• There could be numbered editions of players - for example, there could be 500 Kylian Mbappes out there that get dropped. Or even 1/1

• The self-appointed top Rabona clubs could try and break away from the leagues and start their own Superleague - bringing on the disdain of billions of and everywhere, then postpone the breakaway league when they realize it’s a fucking shit idea…. too soon?

On a more serious note, I don’t know how real players will work with seeing players age a year every week in the game.

It would also be bloody expensive to get licenses for all of this. But the opportunity isn’t just bringing in real players though - there are so many other options.

• Perhaps down the line, you can actually own your own stadium - hell, you can technically even charge advertisers for virtual billboards, or even charge smaller teams a fee to host matches at your stadium if it’s completely decentralized

• The development of a real market with more teams. Some teams will want to develop young talent and sell them off to other owners. There’s already a good market now, with transfers and free agents, but as the game grows, this will grow.

• A better game engine if you want to focus on game management

• However, seeing matches come thick and fast (as I said, every six hours), maybe you can even hire managers to run your team. Managers bring characteristics to your team like playstyles and preferred formations. A great hire can set you up for your season, and a poor hire can set you back.

• I know ZED are looking at one day being able to allow gambling on their races. Is there potential there? I don’t know.

As I said, a lot of this is ‘pie in the sky’ type stuff, but it’s exciting to think about.

Pros and Cons

• It’s a cool soccer management game but also incorporates a collectible aspect

• It uses blockchain tech to bring in a lot of NFT capabilities that will have a lot of uses in the future

• Your team can earn money throughout the game - if you manage your club well, you can be profitable

• It runs pretty much completely with HIVE and they’ve done nothing to really promote the game at this stage, which means that if you don’t know HIVE, you might not have the best experience signing up. I was really out of my depth setting everything up (I’m not a crypto guy, and haven’t had to set up too many wallets, etc…) - but everyone on the discord was great. A guy even sent me $5 of HIVE to get a starter pack while my bank was approving transactions

• There’s an opportunity here - too often, when you hear about an NFT game it’s too late. I like getting in early here - even if the game doesn’t become the next ZED or Sorare.

How is My Team Going?

To be honest….

Pretty fucking well!

I’ve put a little cash into the game (not much, but I had to put in a certain amount for my bank to approve the transfer).

After 24 games into a 30-game season, we’re sitting top of the table! And, by the time you’ve read this, I have probably played off against second (we beat them last time).

It’s going to be a really fun finish to the first season considering that only the top side gets promoted!

We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out, but promotion in the first season would be a great result for the lads.

Will I Stick With Rabona?

At this stage, definitely.

When I first signed up, I was going to suss it out for a week or so and then try Soccer Manager Elite and them compare/contrast.

However, I really enjoy the game, and while it isn’t perfect - it’s been a lot of fun so far.

And who knows, if the game does take off someday, I’ll be an early adopter!

Until then, c’mon you Soccer Cards Rock FCrs (I really need a better ream name)

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