Moving its governance to fans and athletes to increase engagement! Karate Combat is the first professional sports league to launch a DAO!
Karate Combat, a league created to promote the sport of Karate and make it more accessible to a broader audience, announced it will become the first sports league to transition its governance to its fans and athletes by forming a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) in December 2022.
How will Karate Combat’s DAO work?
Hedera has partnered with Karate Combat to release the token KARATE. By tokenising the league, Karate Combat will become a DAO; this means that any one central authority will not control the organisation. Governance will be transferred into the hands of the fans and fighters.
The KARATE token will be used to power the DAO. Fans will be able to use the KARATE token to vote on decisions that will affect the league, such as matchmaking, supplier selection, marketing strategy and rule changes. Fighter signings are also in the control of DAO members. This ensures that the fighters the community wants to see will be the ones that are signed.
Karate Combat has television broadcast distribution in more than 100 countries through partnerships with leading media properties, including CBS Sports, Globo, Eurosport, BeIN Sports and ESPN Deportes. Karate Combat events are streamed for free on the top global platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok. According to Karate Combat, the league has an online community of over 3.5 million fans who could potentially help steer future decisions.
Adam Kovacs, Karate Combat president, stated: “DAOs are the future of professional sports, and we’re the first global sports league to fully adopt one. The sporting world must evolve to increase engagement with a new generation of fans who have grown up on social media and digital gaming. They expect to be active participants in the action, rather than passive viewers.”
Several teams and sports federations have used blockchain-powered fan tokens to drive engagement by allowing fans to vote on specific issues and access exclusive rewards. The change here is that Karate Combat wants to give token owners the power to take control of relevant decisions of the league, such as rule changes, supplier selection and marketing strategy, and this way, increase engagement.
