In a move that bridges blockchain infrastructure with the economics of professional football, MANTRA and WIN Investments have launched a strategic collaboration to tokenize real-world sports assets. The partnership aims to offer regulated, onchain exposure to one of the world’s most valuable and largely untapped sports markets: football player transfers.
WIN Investments, a fintech platform focused on compliant sports-related assets, has developed a system that allows fans and investors to participate in the revenue streams generated by international player transfers. Operating under a regulated framework, WIN issues utility tokens and digital securities linked to tangible assets such as player rights and club entitlements.
One of the platform’s key innovations is its use of the FIFA Solidarity Mechanism — a structure that allocates a percentage of future transfer fees to youth clubs involved in player development. According to FIFA’s 2024 Global Transfer Report, global football transfers represented $66 billion in locked value last year, with $8.59 billion in transfer activity alone. The solidarity mechanism accounts for 5% of this market — approximately $3.3 billion in potential recurring revenue.
So far, WIN has amassed $7.4 million in assets under management, stemming from 130 player transfers and partnerships with 16 clubs. These include top-tier athletes such as Alexis Mac Allister and Emiliano Martínez. The company projects its tokenized AUM to surpass $20 million by the end of 2025.
The partnership provides WIN with access to MANTRA’s infrastructure — specifically, its Layer 1 blockchain, which is purpose-built for real-world asset tokenization and designed to meet regulatory standards. Based in Dubai, MANTRA holds a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license from the city’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), enabling it to offer exchange, brokerage, and investment services under local compliance frameworks.
“Combining a compliant blockchain environment with a sports investment platform allows us to tokenize a globally recognized asset class at scale,” said John Patrick Mullin, CEO of MANTRA. “Latin America, with its deep football culture and regulatory evolution in digital assets, presents a logical starting point.”
Looking ahead, the companies plan to roll out fan and investor-facing products within the MANTRA ecosystem, starting in Q4 2025. Among the most anticipated are transfer tokens — digital assets that represent a fractional claim on the revenue from a player’s next transfer. These products are designed to function within FIFA’s solidarity rules, aligning investor participation with youth development incentives.
The announcement follows a series of strategic developments from MANTRA, including its recent award as the first DeFi licensee under VARA and the launch of RWAccelerator, a startup program for tokenized real-world asset ventures supported by Google Cloud.
While the concept of bringing football transfers onchain may seem novel, the numbers suggest a different story: a multi-billion-dollar market, rooted in legacy institutions, now moving toward transparent and regulated digital access.
