Securitize and Socios announced a partnership on 2 September 2026 to develop regulated tokenised equity offerings in professional sports teams, under the brand Socios Equity Token. Chiliz's own version of the announcement says the tokens "are currently under development and are not currently available for purchase or investment."

As we previously covered on Sporting Crypto, tokenising teams and giving retail access has been a dream for many in this industry for a long time. This is the first time the two companies with the most relevant licences and sporting connections have had a go.

The TL/DR is: Chiliz want to raise money from fans and institutions to take minority stakes in clubs.

Discussed in this edition of Sporting Crypto:

1) The offering 🧾

2) Who Securitize are 🏦

3) What this is 🔍

4) The market 📊

5) Why I'm sceptical 🤔

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On 27 August 2026, the Chiliz Group, Socios' parent, announced the Socios Equity Token as a new category of digital asset. On 2 September 2026, Securitize were named as the issuing partner.

Chiliz's 27 August 2026 announcement says "Through the acquisition of minority stakes in participating clubs by The Chiliz Group, Socios Equity Token ecosystem will offer eligible participants with a structured economic interest in the teams they invest in."

As per press releases, Securitize handle "regulated securities issuance, investor onboarding, ownership-record administration, transfer controls and ongoing servicing" through their regulated affiliates in the United States and Europe.

The first offerings are expected to go through Securitize's European Trading & Settlement System, which operates under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime. Securitize got that licence from Spain's CNMV on 26 November 2025, and told CoinDesk at the time that they expected their first EU issuance in early 2026. Both releases now say this initiative is "expected to become the first tokenization project launched through" that system.

Alexandre Dreyfus, founder and CEO of the Chiliz Group and Socios, said on 27 August 2026 that "Professional sports franchises are estimated to be worth around $500 billion globally, yet for most, owning even a small stake in a club has always been out of reach."

Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, said "Professional sports teams represent a significant asset class that has remained largely private and difficult to access."

Chiliz say "More details about the participating clubs, offering terms, eligibility and timing will be shared in due course, as individual offerings progress through the necessary club, league and regulatory approvals."

What Chiliz did publish is a survey. Research they commissioned from OnePoll, across fans in the US, UK, Italy, Spain and South Korea, found 72% would buy a digital asset offering club equity, at an average of £913 ($1,240) each. 77% said owning a financial stake would make them feel more connected to their club, and 85% of US fans said they were interested, compared to the 72% global average.

The problem is, fan demand has never really been the issue here. And we’ll get into that in this piece.

Securitize are a company that we’re covering for the first time on Sporting Crypto, so it’s worth explaining who they are.

They were founded in 2017 and are run by Carlos Domingo, who co-founded the business. They are a transfer agent and tokenisation platform, which in plain terms means they keep the legal register of who owns a security and can put that register on a blockchain.

They are best known as the platform behind BUIDL, BlackRock's tokenised money market fund. As covered on Tokenized, the New York Stock Exchange named Securitize as its first digital transfer agent in March 2026, to mint blockchain-native stocks and ETFs and maintain ownership records onchain.

On 2 July 2026, they listed on the NYSE as SECZ through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners II, raising over $400 million at a $1.25 billion pre-money valuation. They tokenised their own shares on Avalanche and Solana on the first day of trading.

Their Q2 2026 results saw revenues of $14.4 million, down 5% on the prior-year quarter, and a net loss of $21.7 million. Average tokenised assets under management were a record $4.3 billion, up 16%, and 663 active funds were being serviced by Securitize Fund Services.

In Europe, Securitize Europe Brokerage and Markets, S.A. is a fully authorised investment firm and runs the Trading & Settlement System under the DLT Pilot Regime.

The DLT Pilot Regime caps what can be listed. It is an EU regulation that lets a licensed operator run trading and settlement of tokenised securities with exemptions from some of the usual market rules, and it comes with guardrails. Shares can only be admitted if the issuer has a market capitalisation under €500 million, and the total value of instruments on any one infrastructure is capped at €6 billion. It’s worth noting that a reform proposal in 2026 would remove the per-instrument caps and lift the aggregate limit to €100 billion.

The structure is a sports investment vehicle with a retail share class, on tokenised rails.

Chiliz raise money into a vehicle, and that vehicle takes a minority stake in a club. Securitize turn that entity's equity into a security that lives on a blockchain, and Socios sell fractions of it to fans, with institutions invited alongside. The 2 September 2026 release names both of these customers; "eligible fans seeking a deeper economic relationship with the teams they support" and "institutional and private-equity investors seeking exposure to a high-value alternative asset class."

That is what Arctos and Sixth Street already do with minority stakes, with two differences;

It’s an interesting shift for Chiliz, and one that moves away from licensing. Fan tokens cost Chiliz a minimum guarantee, they mint licensed fan tokens, sell them, and the clubs and Chiliz take a cut. Now, they’re sourcing equity, tokenising it, and selling that to fans and investors.

The releases don’t spell out the financing concretely, but the 2 September release does say the companies will "work with sports teams, existing owners and institutional investors to structure and tokenize minority equity interests", and names fans and institutions as the two buyers.

Access to elite sports equity already exists. Manchester United are listed in New York. Juventus are listed in Milan and Borussia Dortmund in Frankfurt. Atlanta Braves Holdings has traded on Nasdaq as BATRA since Liberty Media split it off in July 2023, and Formula 1 trades as FWONA. Madison Square Garden Sports, which owns the Knicks and Rangers, filed with the SEC to split into two listed companies, MSG Knickerbockers and MSG Rangers, with the spin-off expected by the end of October 2026.

A fan with a brokerage account can own the Braves, F1, United or Juventus today, and the Knicks shortly. But it is true that ‘sports as an asset class’ is largely private.

But does tokenisation mean anything when it comes to solving the access problem?

Not really.

The pitch is that the equity comes attached to the fan relationship, through the Socios app, to fuel superfandom.

I have been pitched this idea since 2021, to not much avail. Indeed, although the regulatory frameworks are now there, I do wonder whether the market is.

As we previously covered on Sporting Crypto, the top 100 sports franchises are all worth $2 billion or more, around half a trillion dollars combined (which coincidentally is the same number used by Dreyfus).

Let’s run the maths on this market.

If 20% of owners were open to tokenising, that is $100 billion of club value in play.

However, what gets sold is a minority stake, so at 20% of each of those clubs it is $20 billion.

(20% is pretty aggressive, too).

That’s a small market, but one big enough for Chiliz to pivot into, considering the size of the fan token market (~$150m) and that they have likely exhausted most of the income they could make from issuing them.

Sports is an asset class because of scarcity. Deloitte's Annual Review of Football Finance had Premier League clubs at a combined pre-tax loss of £135 million in 2023/24, and ESPN reported that figure rising to £948 million in 2024/25. Juventus posted a €199 million net loss in 2023/24 and have not made a net profit since 2017. Franchise values have compounded anyway, because there are only so many of them and there is always a richer buyer. And perhaps logically, the next liquidity unlock is another group of market participants who do not care about the upside financially, but rather the ownership and attachment fans have to their team.

And we’ve seen this creep into the market with varying degrees of success.

Watford tried something like this with Republic as the issuing partner. They put roughly 10% of the club on Republic and Seedrs in June 2024 at a £175 million valuation, looking to raise £17.5 million at £12.44 a share. The shares carried no voting rights but the club said it would pay dividends; investors had the option to receive tokens, and the club planned to facilitate future trading of those tokens.

The Watford Observer reported the offering finished on £3,919,334 from 3,125 investors, under a quarter of the £17.5 million target, while Kingscrowd's record of the US Republic listing has $5,482,779 from 3,347 investors. In March 2025 Watford and Republic cancelled the entire campaign and refunded investors. The club said the money had sat with a third party and "investors will receive a full refund." The shares were never issued, so there was never anything to tokenise or trade.

I’m unsure this takes off for a combination of reasons:

The regulatory rails are there now, which they weren't in 2021, and Securitize are a serious issuer.

This feels like a buzzy announcement from two parties that want to be seen as diversifying their revenue streams, but in reality I’m unsure that this will be a big market for them.

I’d love to be on the wrong side of this one, because I think it is very ‘cool’ in theory, but I’m unsure there is enough meat on the bone here for either party to substantially grow their respective enterprise values.

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