Most fan experiences run on one loop: content → engagement → advertising. Fans watch. Clubs count.
We believe in a different one: take part → contribute → prove it.
Fan Lab starts with the club’s history, its values and its social impact. Each pathway ends in a verifiable credential in the fan’s own BarçaID portfolio. The vision, in Barça’s words, is fans who “collaborate on initiatives” and receive “transparent recognition for their contributions.”
That’s what Andamio stands for: turning audiences into participants. Not a badge for showing up, but proof that you did something that mattered.
Start your FC Barcelona experience: https://lab.barcavision.fcbarcelona.cat/
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Congratz @Sebastian_Pabon very cool! Is it a completely new fan project, or has something similar existed before that has now been adapted/rebuilt? Are there any expectations or estimates on how many fans will use it?
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Really interesting initiative… The idea of turning fan participation into verifiable credentials is especially compelling.
But one question I have: Is there a public walkthrough showing how a fan can verify a credential after completing a Fan Lab activity, ideally from the credential itself to its on-chain proof? I tried to trace the process but couldn’t find a specific example to verify.
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Before deciding to vote against that when it came up in Catalyst, I did some research and this “innovation hub” seems to be a quite irrelevant subsidiary of FC Barcelona. Funded some time in the early 2020s when crypto was the new hot stuff. Mostly forgotten now that the general public runs away screaming when they hear “crypto”.
To be fair, they seem to try to hide the fact that there is any blockchain underneath it all and just market it as a gamified fan experience. Might work or might not. My guess would be that it’s questionable and too far away from the main thing: watching football and drinking beer.
But that begs the question: Why waste money on building it on blockchain tech at all and not just do an effing on-premise database if you only provide shenanigans for your own community, anyway. On the one hand, they probably trust you to some degree. On the other hand, if you walk away, there is no value left in a fan community even if it is on a blockchain. There is no need at all to build something like that on a decentralised, (more or less) trustless technology without men in the middle.
Can someone who has never used crypto complete their first activity without setting up a wallet, or is that part of getting started?
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Barça Fan Lab shows how major sports brands can use blockchain for meaningful fan engagement, not just speculation.
Building it on Cardano also highlights the importance of scalable, transparent and compliant digital infrastructure.
The next challenge will be balancing innovation, user protection and sustainable Web3 adoption.