Chiliz, the global blockchain leader for Web3 sports and entertainment, is pleased to announce the launch of its $50M USD incubator and accelerator programme Chiliz Labs.

Backed by Jump Crypto, Chiliz Labs will foster viable and innovative early-stage blockchain projects looking to leverage the new Chiliz blockchain for sports and entertainment, which saw its genesis block validated on 8 February, as well as the Socios.com partner network, providing strategic guidance and funding to help them forge a clear-cut path to success.

Chiliz is building the sports and entertainment industry’s largest community of fans, brands, and innovative developers, to deliver the network benefits of a dedicated sports web3 ecosystem. As part of this vision, Chiliz Labs is committed to building an ecosystem for entrepreneurs and developers focused on creating long-lasting, utility-oriented projects and will announce its first partners soon.

Chiliz recently announced LiveLike and FanFest as the first companies committed to building on the new chain and will publicly announce 8–10 additional enterprise level projects soon. This will include NFT ticketing pilots, third-party athlete-focused Fan Tokens and Web3 infrastructure partners building for sports and entertainment.

Kanav Kariya, President of Jump Crypto, said: “Chiliz has developed a unique solution to one of the most salient problems that sports teams and leagues face, which is how to sustainably and affordably scale their brands and maximise fan engagement globally.

“Chiliz is changing the way we think about what it means to be a fan of a sports team, and we are extremely excited to support Chiliz Labs to leverage Web3 technology to bring teams and their fans closer together. We will be continuing to work closely with Chiliz to bring our blockchain and crypto expertise to the Sports and entertainment industries, helping to deliver community events such as hackathons.”

Alexandre Dreyfus, CEO of Chiliz and Socios.com, said: “At Chiliz, we’re harnessing blockchain technology to build communities where sports teams can have a direct relationship and value exchange with their fans. Developers choosing the Chiliz Chain to build their new innovative projects is central to our vision, allowing us to build an ecosystem of fan experiences and transactions where Fan Tokens provide a ‘digital key’ which can work across any products or experiences built on our infrastructure.

“Chiliz Labs is a central pillar of this strategy and with the help of our partners at Jump Crypto, who we thank for supporting our vision, we look forward to welcoming some of the most promising, viable, and innovative projects in the blockchain space to the Chiliz Chain.”

Chiliz is the creator of Fan Tokens and the Socios.com fan engagement and rewards app. Fan Tokens are fungible, scalable utility tokens that allow sports teams to connect with and reward their global fanbases. The Socios.com Fan Token ecosystem and audience continues to grow with more than 170 partners across the globe and more than 1.8 million wallets.

In December 2022, Chiliz announced the launch of Gameused.com, a new, end to end memorabilia authentication service for sports and entertainment, delivering storage, NFC and NFT authentication, redemption and resale.

This new service successfully premiered during the recent EA Sports Supercoppa Italiana, which saw Lega Serie A giants and Socios.com partners AC Milan and FC Internazionale face-to-face in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). The balls with which Inter scored each of their three goals in the 3–0 victory against their local rivals were authenticated using Gameused.com technology and made available for $INTER Fan Token holders to redeem on Socios.com.

In August 2022, Chiliz announced a $100M investment in FC Barcelona’s digital content creation and distribution hub Barça Digital Entertainment to spearhead the club’s Web3 strategy.

Chiliz, which recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, saw its workforce grow by over 70% in 2022, with its 300+ strong employees spread across nine locations around the world. The full mainnet of its new blockchain, the layer-1 blockchain for sports and entertainment, is set to be publicly available in the coming weeks. This chain will see Chiliz native token $CHZ become the network enabler of a new, open, multi-vertical ecosystem where leading brands from sports and entertainment can mint NFTs and Fan Tokens, build DeFi products and Play2Earn games, and create event, loyalty and merchandising programs with all fees to be paid in $CHZ.