When vocation and entrepreneurial ability come together, they can form a truly impactful combo. Such is the case of Slice Token, a proposal for tennis and golf fans to invest directly in the careers of their favorite athletes and – in exchange – can take a percentage of the player’s future prizes.
The startup was founded by the former tennis player and current vice president of the Argentine Tennis Association, Mariano Zabaletawhile Angel Lombardi He is the CEO of the firm, which is growing by leaps and bounds and has already managed to recruit athletes of the caliber of Diego Schwartzman, Tomás Etcheverry and Tano Goya.
Argentines created an unprecedented method to finance the careers of athletes
In dialogue with iProfesional, Zabaleta explained that the project arose after noticing the difficulty that Argentine tennis players (and all over the world) had in financing their sports careers. “This problem is not in Argentina, but exists worldwide. Between 80% and 90% of players fall by the wayside due to not being able to finance themselves. In general, what happens is that one, two or three players – who are better in the ranking – agree to have a private sponsor, but the 15 or 20 who follow behind do not and that is ultimately the problem that the sport does not. has been able to solve in years and years, and what gave rise to the idea of Slice Token”.
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For his part, Lombardi recalled some of the situations that pushed him to look for a solution of this style. “This initiative starts because I really like tennis and one always sees the same story, which is repeated over and over again: the raffles to play a future in Córdoba, a sale of pastafrolas or other types of things. Talking to a coach too They tell you that there are great kids, but they don’t have money for their careers.
And he adds: “You start to think about how this can happen in tennis, which is the fourth favorite sport in the world (with a billion fans) and golf is at #10. The players are very few and the market is very asymmetrical, how can it be that among so many fans we cannot solve the problem of so few?
Slice Token: how the startup that brings fans together with athletes works
Slice Token works through a web platform, in which players put their tokens up for sale at a certain price and agree to give a percentage of their future profits to those who have acquired it. Additionally, if investing, users can participate in clinics, raffles, among other proposals from each player.
Ángel Lombardi and Mariano Zabaleta are two of the Argentines who began to work on the problem of financing athletes.
In this sense, Lombardi mentioned: “We created the Slice Token website, where Anyone can invest in the career of a tennis or golf player, from $20. We have 35 players in 9 different countries and more are added every week. Furthermore, in 9 months we already have more than 2,000 users in 43 countries.”
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“All contracts are the same, each player has 20 thousand tokens at their disposal (a digital asset that can be compared and sold). These 20,000 tokens represent 30% of all the player’s future Price money. Therefore, with that number “In the head, the player defines how many tokens to sell and at what price. The player can sell 1, 2, 3 or up to 30% of his prizes,” Lombardi added about the procedure.
Along these lines, Zabaleta expressed: “This is also part of what is happening with all sports in the world. Fans, who pay a ticket or a streaming subscription to see their favorite player and who are asking for more, want be closer to the athlete, they want to be part of their community. And at the same time, for the player, this possibility, which did not exist before, allows him to access financing in a transparent way to face the cost of a professional career, which is between 40,000 and 50,000 dollars per yearbetween coach, trips, hotels, teams, etc.
Play for one or diversify?: This is what Slice Token recommends to its investors
Although the startup is aimed at fans of tennis, golf or other sports, hundreds of users of the platform define themselves as full investors. In this sense, Lombardi suggested: “To the purely investor, we say that The best thing you can do is diversify. Don’t buy from one, buy from several. Because as the token is a digital asset, which can then be sold in a secondary market that we are about to launch, as the player’s future prize grows, I could sell my token at a very high price.”
Such is the case of Tomas Etcheverry’s token. The tennis player who is ranked 31st in the world ranking started selling at about US$200 and today is trading at 350. “The juniors’ token is worth 20 dollars and the highest one we have is that of Tomás Etcheverry which is worth 350 dollars. The investor sees that he can buy at 20 and maybe sell at 350 if he becomes the next Etcheverry. Furthermore, in the middle, live the entire growth experience,” Lombardi clarified in this sense.
Slice Token: what does the user receive when purchasing a token?
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With each token, Each investor is acquiring 0.0015% of all price money. That clause is maintained for two years if the player reaches the Top 100 and then begins to drop very gradually. At which point the investor not only recovered, but would have already made a lot of money. It is paid weekly, every time the player wins a prize, the startup calculates the corresponding amount and delivers it to each tokenholder, who can withdraw the funds to a bank account or virtual wallet.
The Argentine Tomás Etcheverry is today the player with the most expensive token for sale ($350).
Regarding transparency and the support of the funds, Lombardi maintained that “both sports have public prizes, which gives absolute transparency to the entire process, because Slice Token takes the raw prizes and “When a tournament ends, the user knows exactly how much is going to go to your account.”
It is worth clarifying that the firm suggests to each athlete what price to assign to each token. However, the player can offer other types of rewards in exchange for their token being sold for a higher amount. “The price of the token is defined by the player, although Slice Token suggests one. Because each player can generate a different experience. Maybe, we suggest that the price be 200 dollars, but the player tells you ‘No, let it be 300 and I offer a golf clinic to everyone who has my token,” Lombardi concluded in a talk with this medium.
Slice Token today has a team of 11 people distributed around the world, who are united by a vocation for sports and the goal of building a community. “What unites us is passion. You have to be interested, because the awards are given on Sundays. So, “The first thing we ask is to have passion for this and for solving this problem.”they assure.
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Looking ahead to 2024, the startup hopes to add another 30 athletes and began contacts with the association that it set up – neither more nor less – than the champion of 24 Grand Slams, Novak Djokovic, to solve this same problem.
“With Slice Token, we want to change the paradigm so that everyone can have the possibility of having a career in sports, no matter what your social status is or if you have a family, a club or a community that supports you, we even want this be as inclusive as possible, It does not depend on having extraordinary performance or results to reach a place in the ranking, but that you have the opportunity to try it,” Zabaleta concluded about his project.
2023-09-26 19:42:00
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