Securitize Will Issue Socios' Tokenized Sports Team Equity

Securitize will handle regulated securities issuance, investor onboarding and ownership records for Socios.com’s plan to sell tokenized minority stakes in professional sports teams, the two companies said Wednesday.

The partnership supplies a licensed issuer for the product Socios’ parent announced on its own last week. Under the arrangement, Socios.com leads relationships with teams and the fan-facing layer, and Securitize leads issuance, transfer controls and ongoing servicing through its regulated affiliates.

The tokens carry the Socios Equity Tokens brand and are, in the companies’ words, “subject to applicable securities laws, league requirements, club approvals and jurisdictional restrictions.” The release says Fan Tokens and Socios Equity Tokens will remain separate products, the first for engagement and utility and the second a regulated financial interest.

“Professional sports teams represent a significant asset class that has remained largely private and difficult to access,” said Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize. “Securitize’s regulated infrastructure in the United States and Europe can provide teams and their owners with a new way to issue and administer equity while preserving the investor protections and ownership rights that should come with a regulated security.”

The €500 Million Ceiling

The release says the initiative is expected to be the first tokenization project launched through Securitize’s European Trading & Settlement System under the EU DLT Pilot Regime. That regime carries hard size limits, written into Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2022/858.

Shares can be admitted to a DLT market infrastructure only if the issuer’s market capitalization is below €500 million at the moment of admission. Bond issuances are capped at €1 billion. Aggregate market value across every instrument on a single infrastructure cannot exceed €6 billion at admission, and an operator that reaches €9 billion has to activate its transition strategy and move the assets to conventional market infrastructure.

Socios puts the global value of professional sports franchises at roughly $500 billion, a figure the release footnotes to Sportico’s team valuations. The €6 billion aggregate ceiling is about 1.4% of that. The €500 million share limit is the tighter constraint: Juventus, the one Socios partner club with a listing of its own, carries a market capitalization above €800 million on Borsa Italiana.

Neither company said which entity would issue the shares, how offerings would be structured against the caps, or whether a vehicle holding a minority stake rather than the club itself would be the admitted issuer.

Securitize won the DLT trading and settlement system authorization from Spain’s CNMV in November 2025 for its Spanish entity, Securitize Europe Brokerage and Markets, and said it would deploy on Avalanche.

Twenty-Five Owners Maximum

Owners voted in August 2024 to allow private equity funds to buy into clubs on narrow terms: a maximum 10% per team, a minimum 3% per stake, a six-year holding period, no voting power, a controlling owner who keeps at least 30%, and no more than 25 owners in total per team, counting the controlling owner, individuals, families and funds. Only league-approved funds qualify, and direct investment by sovereign wealth and pension funds is barred.

The 25-owner limit does not by itself rule out a token with many holders, since a fund or vehicle pooling them would plausibly count once, which is how the private equity funds were accommodated. It does mean the structure has to be approved rather than assumed. European football clubs, where all of Socios’ current partners sit, operate under different ownership rules club by club, and the announcement says participating teams, offering terms and investor eligibility will be disclosed only if and when individual offerings are approved.

A $146 Million Category

Socios’ existing product is small measured against the asset class it wants to reach.

Fan tokens are a $146.1 million category across 67 tokens, according to CoinGecko. The largest is VATRENI, issued by the Croatian Football Federation, at $25.6 million. PSG, the first club Socios signed, is at $8.1 million. CHZ trades at $0.0134 for a market cap of $140.8 million, down 6.7% over the past week and 98.5% below its March 2021 high.

Socios says Fan Tokens have generated more than $700 million for sports organizations since 2018, without publishing a breakdown, and that it works with more than 70 clubs and federations, among them Arsenal, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, FC Barcelona, Juventus and the national teams of Argentina, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium. The boilerplate at the bottom of the same release puts the count at more than 80 clubs.

Fan tokens were named as an example of a digital collectible in the joint SEC and CFTC interpretive guidance of March 17, 2026, with a footnote adding that they have hybrid characteristics and could also be classified as digital tools. Equity tokens would fall under the guidance’s fifth category, digital securities. The Defiant covered the guidance when it landed.

Socios announced its first US fan tokens in July with five university athletic programs through Playfly Sports. Those tokens have not launched; the company said it is still defining their tokenomics and targets a launch before the end of 2026.

Securitize Q2 Results

Securitize reported average tokenized assets under management of $4.3 billion in the second quarter, with total revenue down 5% to $14.4 million, tokenization revenue down 12% to $7.8 million and a net loss of $21.7 million. The release puts AUM at approximately $5 billion as of August 2026.

SECZ traded at $6.32 on Tuesday afternoon, down 2.17%, for a market cap of $1.03 billion, in the lower third of a 52-week range of $5.14 to $13.70. The company listed on the NYSE on July 2 through a SPAC merger and tokenized about $295 million of its own stock on Solana and Avalanche the same day.

Its recent work has been in listed equities rather than sports. Securitize signed Computershare in April to act as transfer agent for issuer-sponsored tokens representing direct equity ownership in US-listed companies.

Fans And Private Equity

The stated audience is two groups at once: fans who want an economic claim on the club they support, and institutional and private-equity investors looking for exposure to franchise value.

“For years, Socios.com has helped teams create more direct digital relationships with their supporters,” said Alexandre Dreyfus, founder and CEO of The Chiliz Group and Socios.com. “Our partnership with Securitize allows us to explore the next stage of that evolution through regulated tokenized equity, combining our sports network with the infrastructure needed to bring these opportunities to eligible investors.”

The demand evidence Chiliz has published is a survey it commissioned. OnePoll polled 5,000 people across the US, UK, Italy, Spain and South Korea for the company’s Equity Research Survey; 72% said they were interested in buying club equity digital assets, and respondents put average willingness to invest at £913.