Blockchain and Sport — Why I co-founded a Platform to decentralize the industry

Published in

Globatalent

5 min readMar 21, 2018

Sports need to be more transparent and decentralization through blockchain can change many of the current processes within the sporting world. In this article I want to share my personal experiences as well as why I co-founded Globatalent, a blockchain platform built to bring transparency within the sports industry.

There are many corruption cases which have occurred in various public and private sports agencies within different sports and I believe that fair-play should be implemented and regulated throughout the industry in every single sport.

All athletes strive to specific strong values such as effort, sacrifice, perseverance, collaboration, camaraderie and a healthy lifestyle. For those moving into their own sports professionally, we can not allow these qualities to be associated with vote buying, doping, abuse of authority, violence on the fields and hooliganism. Sport is fundamental to the world and it is important that the positive values of sports are not undermined with corruption cases as we have seen in different sports all over the world. Pierre de Coubertin, the father of Modern Olympics said ‘All sports must be treated on the basis of equality’.

I experienced the dark side of the sports industry when I worked as a General Manager at a top-level basketball club. I was approached with incredibly dishonest proposals by unethical people who are currently still within the game. Thankfully, the values instilled in me by my family meant that I did not accept any of these proposals but it was the disappointment of seeing misconduct within a sport that I love that made me decide to walk away from this career path. I had the strength and courage to make such a hard decision but others within sports do not have this opportunity and I concluded that Blockchain is one of the tools we can use to take the sports industry to the next level of development. A development where there is a massive need.

Jesse Owens defied the odds by becoming the first African-American athlete to gain a sponsor. Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas, worked tirelessly to persuade Owens to wear his footwear and he finally agreed. Dassler approached Owens because he is one of the true heroes in bringing equality to the sporting world. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, during a time when Germany was under Nazi-rule, Owens proved that Adolf Hitler’s Aryan race were not the ‘Perfect People’ as mentioned in propaganda being promoted within the country at the time. Jesse Owens was not blonde, Jesse Owens was not blue eyed and Jesse Owens was not German — he was a black man living in the United States of America at a time when racism was still rife. He shocked the world by winning in different track and field events, obliterating his opponents. He fought for equality within the game by using his phenomenal talent and along with Adidas, who took a massive risk by endorsing someone who was everything that the dictator of their country opposed, started the journey for creating a sporting world with a lot more equality.

We aspire to follow the path that Jesse Owens outlined for all of us

Blockchain decentralization will reduce opportunities for corruption and unethical actions that we are seeing in the sporting world today. It can help on a global scale and in every single sport.

For example, we will be able to use blockchain technology that will allow athletes to include their medical passport that will be accessible for anti-doping agencies. We will look out for the athletes first and prevent their data from being mishandled and from being used in an unethical way.

Blockchain can also have a huge impact on the entire ticketing process. If we were to include tournaments like the next World Cup to be in a blockchain, we would have the ability to track the buying and selling of tickets. We could therefore block or authorize the resale of tickets, prevent people from selling the tickets at an extortionate price and also make sure it would be impossible for people to purchase tickets who have bans and are forbidden to access stadiums due to violence or any other reason. All this would be in a safe, traceable and a transparent manner while always having the identity of each buyer. We can make sure that the digital footprint is being used properly and create prevention of fake tickets from being sold on the internet.

We can create a world where both national and international federations could use the same blockchain. A federated German triathlete who partakes at the Ironman triathlon would be able to check whether everything is federated and if it is not or there are any issues, they would only have to pay a small fee for their health insurance and it could be an automated process. This is currently impossible. Adding to this, if they shared the list of those who are sanctioned for doping, it will immediately prohibit enrollment without violating their right to privacy.

Globatalent is one of the first projects based on the blockchain sports world and we are excited about this new paradigm. We want to lead this transformation in the world of sport and help create and generate sport based on blockchain and introduce a decentralized ecosystem.

We are already in contact with companies that are considering implementing blockchain for the creation of decentralized processes in the world of sport. Some of them will be integrated into our platform offering their services as a scout of the players and others will be independent to Globatalent.

I co-founded Globatalent to build a transparent, fair and valued sports ecosystem. Globatalent is here to promote these values.

By Sunil Bhardwaj

Co-Founder & CEO at Globatalent

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