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Storied French football club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) have announced the launch of the Joint Innovation Studio (JIS), in collaboration with Matchain - an AI-focused blockchain that focuses on decentralised identity.

The JIS is pitched as a ‘global platform’, operating from PSG’s headquarters in Paris — focusing on uniting experts in Web3 and emerging technologies to create technology solutions that can enhance and disrupt fan engagement solutions, club technology stacks and club operations.

JIS is seen as ‘open and inclusive’ by the creators — and is accepting applications from the following:

Essentially, the way to look at this is a venture studio or accelerator that aims to enhance PSG's digital strategy using Blockchain and AI. Like any accelerator, JIS has listed several key areas that could be potential focus areas.

They include:

Alongside these blockchain-focused areas of innovation, JIS is also looking at AI-Powered Personalized Content, AI-Driven Club Operations and Immersive VR/AR Experiences.

Par Helgosson, Head of PSG Labs said:

Analysis & Concluding Thoughts 🧠

It’s fascinating to see a team create something like this, that aims to broaden their effectiveness across blockchain and emerging technology whilst platforming other ventures and startups.

What strikes me as a sticking point, however, is how some of these startups and solution providers meld with current PSG partners across a variety of inventory; ticketing, NFTs, fan tokens and ID solutions to name a few.

Do the solutions born out of JIS have to work with those partners, and if so, will those partners even want to do so?

Take ticketing for example.

These deals are exceptionally hard to do, and most blockchain ticketing solutions are not battle-tested. So would an existing PSG ticketing partner implement and test this product, or would said ticketing solution be tested and used in something less matchday focused such as a charity event or something along those lines?

We have seen a trend in sports where leagues and in this case, teams, opening digital accelerators.

They trade capital, resources, connections and exposure for owning a potential future solution to a digital, infrastructure or operational problem they have at lower costs, with the upside that said solution also goes on to provide that service to the sports industry more broadly. We are yet to see many success stories here, however, and it will be interesting to see how ‘wave 1’ of the projects coming out of these team or league-based accelerators do.

For JIS, I think the issue will be reconciling fragmented digital experiences at a club with reportedly 500 million fans globally, with an ensemble of finely diced rights that are cut in that way to maximise commercial value.

And that reconciliation is really difficult.

How do you build a world-class fan engagement platform encompassing emerging technologies when rights are a blocker?

Sports is a slow-moving industry, and in football particularly you have an industry that has tried to commercialise what is essentially tech innovation. There is some confusion as well, in that, many commercial leaders at football teams expect payment for service provision in the blockchain space. Now, when there is a commercial upside (rights reselling like NFTs or tokens) or pure sponsorship — that makes sense. But there are other products and services within this sector that are being thrown into the same bucket.

That at least is something I’m excited by when it comes to JIS. There is no doubt some sort of transactional and commercial relationship with Matchain; the tech partner, but for those building solutions within JIS they hopefully have a less commercially oriented route to market and execution.

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