The world is filled with talented athletes trying to make a name for themselves. However, finding enough monetary resources to sustain equipment, traveling, training, or living costs is not only troublesome, but also very much limited.

With digitalization and blockchain technologies, public subsidies can be replaced with new forms of acquiring financial support based on talent, and not on nationality, gender, education, and other determinants of social entitlement.

But, how prevalent is the funding problem, and how can something like blockchain-based digital collectibles or trading cardshelp?

Scarcity of Sport Funds

Scarcity in sports funding can be best illustrated with an example of the UK, where more popular sports are suffering from a lack of monetary resources. The home of football, cricket and rugby is starting to feel the consequences of the social and economic shifts associated with the COVID-19, adding more layers to the issue of allocating funding for athletes.

Even though the resources for the sports sector were massively cut down, popular sports are still being participated in. Nevertheless, without the proper governmental funding, and having to rely mostly on personal resources, ParalympicsGB managed to claim the first gold medal in wheelchair rugby in Europe at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics.

In the words of Kylie Grimes, a member of the team, “I joined later but I had to work for two years without funding, paid for equipment, get to training, and have family support. We have had to dig deep.”

Funding for athletes is not only crucial to winning but also in providing the right resources available to the team and its members. This win allowed the wheelchair rugby team to make their way back into relevancy, and get the funding for the future of this sport.

Unfortunately, this isn’t just a sports-related issue, as immediately unprofitable areas like education and arts also struggle with getting the resources they need at the idealtime. This is why esports players have started to rely on crowdfunding services to get the needed sports funding support.

If those problems are apparent in first-world countries like the UK, the less developed nations are struggling even more to sustain national sportsmanship. Even more, funding support is mostly dependent on the country’s ability to monetize it, as shown in the example of the paralympic rugby team. Governments rely on the assets that can make them money, and not on what the people need to develop on a personal level.

How can we invert the current economic system that is built around profit and not passion?

Alternative Ways of Support

An individual who cannot rely on public funding for athletes subsidies to support their career, and only a few options are available.

Self-Funding Platforms

While only a percentage of athletes manage to train and work at the same time, bearing the health costs of this consuming lifestyle, even fewer can rely on their families for financial support. So many have turned to self-funding platforms, unaware of the consequences using a service like this for sports funding support might have.

Borderless platforms like Patreon, Ko-Fi and GoFundMe have become the place for athletes to look for support worldwide. However, succeeding on these platforms often requires athletes to already have a big enough following. Although many people correlate joining Patreon with an increase in popularity, it is the fandom garnered before joining the platform that makes it profitable.

The collected profit, however, doesn’t go entirely to the athlete’s benefits. Depending on the Patreon plan athletes want to rely on, the platform can deduct even 12% from their sports funding support, not to mention payment processing fees for each individual transaction.

Even though these platforms are riddled with fees, Patreon is very popular, with over 210.000 creators getting support by at least one backer. And to continue developing, the platform is looking to implement blockchain technology in the future.

Platforms like Patreon also allow for a subscription tier system to make sports team funding more enticing. But this puts another layer of pressure onto the sportsperson, as they need to be available on a weekly or monthly basis to fulfill the requirements of the platform such as one-on-one time with the athlete or training plans for backers.

But getting support shouldn’t be so complicated, and with digital trading cards, athletes might be able to exchange assets for unhindered support.

What Are Digital Trading Cards?

When mentioning trading cards, it is hard not to connect them to old baseball, Pokemon, or even Yu-Gi-Oh! or Magic: The Gathering trading cards.

Each of those had different use cases: baseball cards were a way for baseball fans to get a hold of their favorite player in card format, Pokemon cards tied in with the massively popular video game and TV show, and Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering cards apart from being a part of an overbearing narrative, are mainly playing cards.

Digital sports trading cards are able to combine the best characteristics of the mentioned classic trading cards and provide support to the person who created them. Powered by TurnCoin, VirtualStaX can be created by anyone looking to fund their journey. Supporters can  purchase and trade these StaX to support said talent. Not to mention that the creator has the option to devote a percentage of their income to the Heart of Sport foundation, which supports sportspeople all around the globe.

The cards themselves picture the person behind the VirtualStaX, and some crucial statistics about their particular talent. The card’s details can be seen in StaXApp.

Creators, athletes, and influencers from all over the world can craft their own digital collectibles and enable friends, family, and all of their fans to pitch in and support them on their way to championships and future glory.

An instance of how StaX can help millions of talented people can be observed in the example of Ali Ann, a young, talented golfer from South Africa. Through VirtualStaX, Ali Ann has received support from her fans worldwide and made the life of herself and her parents easier (and her own training process more manageable) with the additional income that those digital sports trading cards provided her.

Creating Your Own Digital Trading Cards

Anyone can create their own VirtualStaX in the StaX App. Each VirtualStaX creator has StaX (cards) that they can sell to their fans through the Stax App. VirtualStaX are more than ordinary trading cards, they go beyond that. VirtualStaX allows supporters to be part of the individual’s journey for the long-run – from rising star to superstar. The whole TheXchange marketplace is powered by TurnCoin, a revenue-sharing digital security.

Depending on how the athletes share their journey, and how they interact with their supporters, among other factors, the value of their StaX can increase.

Whether you just want to provide funding for athletes and hold onto their StaX, play around and trade StaX, or support an up-and-coming talented individual all the way on their journey to fame, this is all possible in the StaXApp which launches in the US in Q1 of 2022.

By buying StaX, supporters are given the opportunity to follow the journey of any talented person across the globe. The digital trading cards can fund the careers of many people with different talents, and this is all possible with the current decentralized tools and support.