Are fan tokens fan tokens?

Abstract

Fan tokens, digital assets providing privileges including rewards and promotions as well as voting rights in polls, recently became highly popular among the football clubs and the (fan) investors. Fan tokens differ from the stocks of football clubs with respect to ownership properties. Fan tokens might be associated with investor mood changes and reaction to match results. This paper aims to explore the impact of football match results on token prices of the clubs. We show that both the losses and wins in the most prestigious European tournament, UEFA Champions League affect the fan token abnormal returns, losses with an effect of a larger magnitude. Domestic matches and Europa League matches are not followed by similar reactions from the investors. Our results are robust to the use of alternative model specifications and various benchmark assets.