With 38 million wallets connected, 25,000 people received rewards; the math of fan ownership does not look good.
Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News
On April 6th, the football media platform OneFootball announced its airdrop distribution plan: it only covers 25,000 top users, with a maximum of 100,000 OFC tokens available; the unlocking is split into three tiers, with 30% unlocked after 3 months, 65% after 6 months, and 100% after 9 months, with each tier unlocking only 10% on the day of TGE.
After the plan was announced, dissatisfaction erupted on X, with some early participants calling it a 'scam.' Many users had spent $1 to mint Pre-TGE paid badges, along with months of daily check-ins and match predictions, only to find themselves not on the reward list; the community's calls for increasing the unlocking ratio on the day of TGE have continued to rise.
OneFootball will complete its native token OFC (OneFootball Credits) TGE on April 9th. This global leader in football digital media, established in 2008 and boasting over 200 million monthly active users (according to its official website), is attempting to reshape itself from a traditional content distribution platform into an 'on-chain fan economy' ahead of the 2026 World Cup, yet it finds itself in a trust crisis at a critical juncture of token issuance.
Image source: OneFootball Club tweet
The Web3 ticket purchased for $300 million flipped on its first journey.
OneFootball's Web3 ambitions began with a $300 million Series D funding round in April 2022.
Liberty City Ventures led the investment, with Animoca Brands and Dapper Labs participating; the three parties jointly established OneFootball Labs, aiming to bring over 200 million football users on-chain. The first product is AERA, a video moment NFT trading platform based on the Flow blockchain.
The result is disastrous. Out of 200 million users, only about 50,000 purchased NFTs, with a conversion rate of less than 0.03%.
In July 2023, founder and CEO Lucas von Cranach was forced to resign, and AERA was shut down and fully refunded in the same week.
According to reports from Handelsblatt, OneFootball had already defaulted on copyright fees to multiple leagues at that time, and the Bundesliga NFT copyright was never delivered as a product. The official statement admitted: 'We have not found a commercially viable path.'
A company that raised $300 million saw its first Web3 attempt collapse to zero within a year.
The funnel of the points system: 38 million in, 25,000 out.
After the failure of AERA, OneFootball launched the OneFootball Club (OFC) loyalty program in September 2024.
Users create .football IDs and smart wallets, accumulating BALLS points through daily tasks, match predictions, and social interactions; Season 1 and Season 2 attracted over 38 million wallet connections.
The token economy appears quite 'community-first' on paper. The total supply of OFC is 1 billion tokens, with 51% allocated to the community and partners, a team share of 7.5% with a 21-month lock-up period, and a public sale price of $0.05, equal to the private placement valuation.
However, the numbers on the execution side tell another story. 38 million wallets participated, but only 25,000 users actually won, meaning over 99.9% of participants were left empty-handed after long-term investment.
Calls for refunds of badge fees have been rising. On April 7th, an open letter written by a user claiming to be ranked first on the BALLS leaderboard, @Crypto_SunnyS, sparked heated discussion on X. He voluntarily requested the project team to reduce his token allocation by 75% and redistribute the share to more participants, suggesting that the reward range be expanded to at least 75,000 people, with 60% unlocked on TGE day.
Image source: Crypto Sunny tweet
Not a scam, but the trust discount has already occurred.
OneFootball is not a meme project run by an anonymous team. It is registered in Berlin, has copyright agreements with over 200 leagues, and is backed by institutions like Animoca Brands, with no contract loopholes and no significant early cashing out by the team.
The failure of AERA proves that user volume does not equate to on-chain conversion rates; the controversy over the BALLS points system exposes another structural issue.
When a large platform ventures into Web3, the larger the user base, the more severe the dilution effect of the reward pool, and the weaker the sense of acquisition for early participants. This contradiction repeatedly arises in the field of sports fan tokens.
Chiliz's Socios platform has partnered with over 70 top clubs, including Barcelona, PSG, and Juventus, to issue fan tokens, using 'millions of fans' as a selling point; however, issues such as marginalized voting rights and highly concentrated rewards have always accompanied it. OneFootball is not an exception, but the ratio of 38 million to 25,000 pushes this contradiction to the extreme.
Some community voices from Onefootball Club | Image source: X platform
In response to community pressure, the project team made a partial response on April 6th: the leaderboard is not the final list, and the actual winning threshold has been lowered after filtering out bots; they promised that all Season 1 and Season 2 participants will receive a permanent FanScore bonus, affecting the weight of future airdrop rights. However, there was no direct response to the core demands for refunds and adjustments to the unlocking ratio.
The window before the World Cup is the only answer for product.
After the TGE on April 9th, the core test facing OneFootball is not the price of the token, but the product.
The roadmap for 2026 shows that Q2 will launch the on-chain 'Fan-Graph' identity system, Q3 will enter the 'Road to World Cup' phase, including FanPass v2 and partner reward pools; the goal for Q4 is to build a fan economy trading layer and developer network, with an official growth target of 500,000 wallets and 1 million on-chain transactions.
The World Cup is OneFootball's biggest narrative catalyst and the last window of tolerance. If product advancement is slow and market performance significantly underwhelms expectations after TGE, current discontent will escalate rapidly; if exclusive content, prediction rewards, and on-chain identity features can be delivered during the World Cup, the conversion story of 200 million monthly active users may be retold.
With $300 million in funding, a user base of 200 million, and 51% of tokens allocated to the community, OneFootball still holds strong cards. However, after the collapse of AERA and the trust damage from this airdrop, the patience window left by the market may only be the last 3 months leading up to the World Cup.
OFC roadmap timeline | Image source: OneFootball Club tweet