January 7 – Serie A’s Fiorentina have set a blockchain-meets-football first with each of the club’s playing shirts to be inserted with a dedicated chip that can be tracked and will prevent counterfeiting.
The partnership between Fiorentina and Genuino saw the technology tested at the Fiorentina vs Inter game, played on December 15, and Fiorentina vs Roma on December 20. Each shirt carried a dedicated chip which was linked to a unique and unchangeable code to certify the authenticity.
The technology and the project will be formally unveiled at Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show that begins today. The club will now roll out the dedicated chips into shirts for the remainder of the season.
Giuseppe Barone, General Manager, Fiorentina, said: “This partnership is an important step for a Club such as Fiorentina that wants to be ready for the challenges that will arise in the future. Genuino’s solution, offering a product and a service extremely innovative, will allow the tracing of the jersey’s life key moments, creating a digital copy of the physical jersey, to allow us certify and authenticate the same, but also to help us fight counterfeiting and to involve our supporters through innovative products and activations, all over the world.”
The Genuino certification protocol tracks the successive ownership transfers of the shirt, tracing the supply chain, eliminating counterfeiting and connecting the brand with a customer via a higher value product.
Genuino is an Italian innovation start-up, having been initially founded as a company in 2018 in the US.
Eleonora Mulas, CEO, Genuino, said: “Building together with ACF Fiorentina such a prototype, unique in its kind, that uses and integrates extremely innovative technologies such as IoT, decentralised applications, smart sensors, artificial intelligence and smart contracts, and that at the same time will allow us to collect funds to help Meyer’s Hospital children, and at the same time to be on the frontline in the sport business innovation, is a great pride for our company.”
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