Italy’s Fiorentina Choose Blockchain Technology to Stamp Out Fake Jerseys

Italian professional football club, ACF Fiorentina, has partnered with blockchain startup, Genuino to enable easy identification of official team jerseys, and potentially stamp out the counterfeiting of these shirts.

The Italian side revealed the development on Sunday noting that the jerseys used by players will after usage be certified with a special chip combined with a unique, unchangeable code that marks them as authentic.

The first batch of shirts now certified on the blockchain was used for the club’s December games against league rivals Inter Milan and AS Roma. At the end of the season, Fiorentina says it will at the end of the season make all blockchain-certified shirts available to fans and collectors via a charity auction.

Fiorentina CEO Joe Barone, while speaking on the new partnership identified it as an important step for the club as it continues to promote innovation. He added:

It [the blockchain-based solution] can also give life, in perspective, to an ecosystem functional to fight counterfeiting, involving our fans in a new shopping experience and interaction with the club.

More detail about the project is expected to come this week during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Fiorentina is understandably not the first Italian soccer side to adopt blockchain-based products to improve its activities.

League rivals, AS Roma and Juventus, are among the seven teams launching fan tokens on Socios.com to allow fans to participate in making some decisions at the club.