Manchester United Launch Web3 Fantasy Game

Thanks to the 3683 readers who are exploring where Sports meets Web3. If you're reading this and still haven't signed up, click the subscribe button below!

Fantasy United Overview 😈

Manchester United Football Club have launched digital trading cards (NFTs) and a fantasy game, Fantasy United, in which the player cards can be used.

For the 2024/25 season, Manchester United supporters can begin collecting the trading cards, which feature all first-team players from the men’s squad.

The cards come in three rarities; Classic, Rare and Ultra-rare and will be dynamically updated with real-time stats throughout the season.

The cards can be used to build a five-a-side team to earn points in Fantasy United, which is claimed to be a first of its kind created by an English Premier League team.

Supporters will have the chance to go head-to-head against former Manchester United players in their legends league and create their own mini-leagues to play against friends. Prizes and experiences can be won by fans performing well.

Early access was granted to Red Devil NFT holders, one of Manchester United’s first digital collectible editions, with the public launch happening days after on the 31st of July 2024.

The Player Trading Cards are sold in packs of seven for £3 per pack and are built on the Tezos blockchain, Manchester United’s Web3 partner.

So far, there have been almost 13,000 packs sold meaning 90,258 cards in circulation.

Ronan Joyce, Director of Digital Innovation at Manchester United said:

Sunil Singhvi, head of culture at Trilitech, Tezos R&D Hub, added:

User Flow and Experience 📱

Fantasy United’s experience is fairly seamless compared to many branded Web3 experiences.

Supporters can sign in with their own Tezos wallet, or via social log-in.

In the example above we created an account via Google, and then entered our email to receive updates about the game.

Buying packs is equally simple. You can do this using any credit/debit card (via stripe integration).

Once the pack is bought, you can open it to reveal your player cards.

Creating a fantasy team will be familiar to fans who have played any fantasy game. It is easy to select players for specific positions and then save your team.

Overall, there has been a concerted effort here to make the user experience as easy as possible, abstracting the blockchain element as much as possible.

Manchester United’s Web3 Journey 📅

Manchester United have shown themselves to be one of the most mature teams in football in terms of their Web3 strategy.

Chronological view of their journey:

• February 2022: Manchester United sign a multi-year training kit sponsorship deal with Tezos, becoming the official blockchain sponsor of the club.

• November 2022: The club launched a free-to-claim NFT drop called "Man Utd: The Keys," which was claimed by almost 1 million people

• December 2022: Manchester United launched ‘The Devils’ collection — priced at £30 per NFT, with a limited supply of 7,777 units

• July 7, 2023: The club released the "1992/93 collection," a limited range of digital collectibles commemorating the 1992/93 campaign when Manchester United won their first-ever Premier League title

• August 21, 2023: Manchester United launched "Collect United," offering free-to-claim digital collectibles on matchdays for the 2023/24 season, seeing over 750,000 claims

• July 31st, 2024: Manchester United Launch Fantasy United and Digital Trading Cards

Detailed view:

The club began their Web3 journey by creating a Discord community for fans, and then introduced a free digital collectible mint, first allocating 50,000 ‘key’ NFTs to this early Discord community and contributors before going to the public. They ended up having 750,000 NFT claims in total for their free drop.

The keys had three categories of rarity, each with their respective perks acting as gateways to exclusive merchandise, drops and private discord channels.

The activity seen during the free NFT claim was huge for Tezos, with the blockchain seeing 6 times its usual activity, during this campaign. The spike in December 2022 on the right-hand side of the graph below was an all-time high for the Tezos blockchain in terms of contract interactions, at the time.

The next phase was a paid drop, with 7,777 ‘Devils’ NFTs.

Each of the 7,777 Devils in the collection is unique, costing £30 each and fans were able to unlock a series of rewards that included:

• Exclusive airdrops: Free collectibles and giveaways, as well as invitations to physical events at the club. 

• Devil surprises: Unique traits based upon on-pitch activity

• Premium access to Ask Me Anythings (AMAs): Entry to gated areas of the club’s official Discord server.

• Private competition entries: Win match tickets, entry to a corporate box, a spot at our end-of-season Player of the Year awards.

The devils were reserved first for those who were early to the project and had minted the free key drop, with the highest rarity holders getting first refusal.

Manchester United’s next Web3 activation was Collect United.

For the 23/24 football season, 48 hours ahead of each home fixture for the men's and women’s Manchester United teams — a new collectible was available for Manchester United fans to claim for free.

This came with the chance to win exclusive prizes for those who completed a set.

They saw almost 1 million claims of these free collectibles throughout the season.

Then came gamification.

This year rather than focusing on free collectibles, Manchester United turned their attention to Fantasy United, attempting to create a more dynamic and involved Web3-based proposition, as explored earlier in the piece.

Analysis & Concluding Thoughts 🧠

Manchester United have seen great scale in their Web3 activations, as you would expect from a team with this brand and size.

They have funnelled much of this excitement and enthusiasm into a large digital community on Discord with over 100,000 members, making it one of the largest football team Discords globally. The Discord was launched before their first ‘Keys’ NFT collection and has been a cornerstone of their communication and growth.