Former Manchester United football players including Gary Neville and Paul Scholes are teaming up with wealthy Singaporeans Peter Lim and his son Kiat Lim to create an organization that will allow fans to make sports-related investments alongside them.
The participants are creating a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO -- an entity that is meant to have a distributed governance model and brings together participants with set goals or ideas -- that will aim to connect sports enthusiasts globally, according to a statement Monday. CO92 DAO, named after the Manchester United squad of 1992, will focus on strategic projects with football-related entities.
“We are currently already reviewing a range of professional football project opportunities, and will announce developments in the months ahead,” 28-year-old Kiat Lim said by email. “Access to this industry does not come easy or cheap, we are bringing many cumulative years of experience and personal high-level networks into this project to try to make it as big a success as it can be.”
While DAOs and decentralized projects have quickly gained popularity, they also have critics who contend that in reality, decision-making power is often concentrated among a few individuals.
Many details of the CO92 DAO are yet to be determined. Kiat Lim declined to comment on the amount of money that will be involved or give details on the ownership structure. There will be a public token sale with no minimum amount needed to participate, but specifics of allocation will be announced “in due course,” he said.
The management team for the DAO includes Darius Sit, the founder of QCP Capital, QCP Soteria Node founder Sherwin Lee, and Gabriel Yang, who previously worked at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Along with Neville and Scholes, Phil Neville, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs are also involved in the DAO, Kiat Lim said.
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Kiat Lim and his father are no strangers to the sports and blockchain industries. Peter Lim, 68, owns Mint Media Sports, bought Spanish club Valencia C.F. in 2014 and is a shareholder of English club Salford City F.C. He and Neville are longtime business partners. Kiat Lim has teamed up with superstar Ronaldo on football-based digital community ZujuGP, and is aiming to create a private social-networking app based on non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, with Mewah International Inc. scion Elroy Cheo.
Photo: Bloomberg
