Bringing sports into the world on the chain: Exclusive interview with TOPGOAL founder Xander

Q1. TOPGOAL has always focused on the sports track and is very

professional. What are its past achievements in sports?

We started the development of the first mobile football manager game in 2013, started developing 3D games in 2015, and in 2020 we had our own action engine to show all the movements of players in the game. As of last month, the seven products had a total revenue of US$42 billion and 21 million downloads. One of our games won Google Play's Best Strategy Game of the Year in 2019. These experiences can enable us to launch a high-level Web3 football game at a relatively low cost and in a relatively short time.

Q2. The team has been focusing on the sports track for two years, from

NFT at the beginning to Web3 football games to RWA. Why did the team choose these businesses?

There are two reasons why we focus on the sports track. First, the team’s past experience and resources are concentrated in the sports industry. Secondly, the ceiling of the Web3 sports track is high enough, and it is still a blue ocean market.

Our Web2 team has more than ten years of experience in developing sports mobile games. These games have signed many stars familiar to fans as game spokespersons or image ambassadors, and therefore have maintained good cooperative relationships with them. When our NFT business finds them, both parties can often reach new cooperation intentions quickly.

Sports, especially football, is a large and rapidly growing industry with a market size of hundreds of billions of dollars. Football RWA business is inspired by many star RWA projects in 2024. We carefully researched opportunities related to the sports track and found that there are many businesses similar to RWA in Europe and South America. The slogan of TOPGOAL's RWA project TOPMARKET is "I contributed to the rise of a football star". For fans, it is a matter of pride to be able to personally discover, participate and have the opportunity to obtain rich returns of more than a hundred times. We visited scouts, agents and clubs in Europe and America and found that many people understood our ideas and could even talk about it themselves after we started. We think this is the right direction. I hope to make the world of sports a better place through decentralization and self-sovereignty.

Q3. It sounds like Web2’s football game is the starting point for

everything. How did you get on the road to game development?

I got my master's degree from the United States in 2013. When I was in school, two seniors from my undergraduate school asked me to design independent games in my spare time. I was responsible for the UI and part of the planning work. That game project ultimately fizzled out due to lack of investment and some technical difficulties. After thinking about it, I decided to formally seek angel investment to start a business full-time. I struggled with the three themes of football, military and Dota for a long time, and finally chose football as my personal favorite. I have played EA's FIFA series for more than 10,000 hours, and I think I have a very good understanding of what fans and players want. After receiving angel investment, the company has maintained its scale of 10 people, and its office is located in a private house with a monthly rent of 2,300 euros. Later, several games performed well, and the company also received investment from famous investment institutions and industry leaders including Sequoia and Tencent.

Q4. What prompted you to choose to enter the Web3 sports track?

The direct reason was the explosion of NBA Top Shot, which made me understand for the first time how suitable NFT and the entire logic behind it are for sports fans. Since there are already people who are doing a good job on the basketball track, it’s time to start exploring football, which is what you are good at.

Another reason is that after 2019, traditional Web2 sports games have been increasingly impacted by the products of traditional giants. At that time, our company's monthly revenue was second only to FIFA and PES series on the mobile side, but no matter how hard we tried, we could not close the gap. The conclusion of our analysis is that the scale of the sports console game market is much larger than the mobile game market. FIFA and PES, two projects with a combined annual revenue of more than $2 Billion on the console side, have a total investment in marketing that is much larger than that of mobile products. . Correspondingly, their mobile products reap the dividends brought by the massive advertising on the console, which means that mobile game sports teams only need a small amount of funds to obtain many more downloads than small companies like us. This kind of competition is hardly fair, but we can't change it. It will be difficult for us to become number one unless we find a new track, and Web3 is exactly such a track. Without EA Sports and Konami in this track, we have some time to try various ways to become number one.

Q5. Have you encountered any difficulties in the past two years, and what

lessons have you learned?

Yes, we encountered many difficulties that I never imagined and learned many valuable lessons from them.

1. I entered the Web3 industry with almost zero experience. Because I didn’t know the media and channels, I missed many opportunities to expand my visibility.
2. The first game, TopManager, was not familiar with the operation methods of Web3, so the number of game users did not increase significantly. A product that took 9 months to become Web3 was wasted. This prompted us to think that we must launch a newly designed game that is not available on the market and that both Web3 and Web2 fans can quickly get started with. This is Footballcraft now.
3. Because I was not familiar with the security on the Web3 chain, I was attacked by hackers twice in 2023. The first time caused relatively large losses and caused a certain degree of misunderstanding in the community.
4. The Cryptopedia activity on the OKX platform in the summer of 2024. Because the activity rules will give rewards according to the account, this caused a large number of robot players to flood into the game, causing the server to be under too much pressure and causing continuous crashes. In the first week of the activity, our server engineers almost There is no complete night's rest.

I often feel very guilty when I see many complaints, complaints, and even misunderstandings from players online. I dived into it without fully understanding the industry. I would also like to sincerely apologize for the bugs and mistakes we have made. In the two years since entering the Web3 industry, the total number of unexpected things has occurred more than in the ten years of Web2. I think this is also a characteristic of a high-growth industry.

Q6. Did anything happen that gave you motivation to keep going?

Besides my love for football and my goal of connecting sports with Crypto, supporting our community is always a source of motivation for me.

In the first year of the project, I would regularly update my X account. Many players gave me a lot of encouragement and affirmation, and some players expressed their understanding of the misunderstandings I received through private messages, which moved me very much. Later, I abandoned the X account due to force majeure, which made me feel uneasy. But thinking that there are still many people supporting this project gives me a lot of motivation and courage to do a good job in TOPGOAL. Maybe people who didn’t understand me before will have a new understanding of us after the two new projects are launched.

In the process of gradually transforming into a qualified developer from the period when we were ignorant about Web3, we met many very nice partners who gave us great unconditional support. Chiliz will leave a TV or booth for Footballcraft at every Web3 conference in Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai, vigorously promoting such a unique game to users in their community. OKX Web3 colleagues specially coordinated the launch time of other Cryptopedia projects during the European Cup period to ensure that we could catch up with the European Cup match day. BNB Chain, Cyberport, Japan, South Korea and Singapore all helped us so that we can move forward without fear of FUD.

Q7. What are your expectations for Footballcraft? What is your ideal

situation for this product?

Many people will understand Footballcraft as a simplified version of Football Manager, but it is actually a more complex version. Football Manager is a stand-alone game with a buyout system. The player's battle behavior is PvE. Each player can obtain funds to sign the stars he admires by accumulating game time. But Footballcraft is PvP, just like the real football world. Behind every high-level league club is a brain that continues to think. Defeating real opponents in a simulation environment will go down in history (all players share the same timeline, all The feeling that the championship will be written on the blockchain) is incomparable to any stand-alone game or pay-to-win game.

Ideally, when all countries in the game are open (200 countries around the world cannot be opened immediately when the server is launched, they need to be gradually opened based on the number of active players), the entire world should no longer rely on frequent updates from the development team. Because in theory it should be a virtual parallel world that can operate according to the rules of the existing football world. After a few months in the world (one year in the game is equal to one month in real life), you will have your own stars, just like Haaland, Mbappe, and Vinicius in the real world. Maybe the World Cup winner every four months could come from Asia, maybe there could be managers who make $100,000 selling their clubs, maybe the coach of the European club championship team is an old lady who shows up at the stadium every week...

Q8. What do you understand by sports RWA? How will TOPGOAL enter this

track?

TOPMARKET is the first platform to tokenize and trade the economic performance of the world's most promising football players. Revenue from RWA sales is distributed among players, agencies and platforms, ensuring sustainable growth.

Core Asset 1: Future earnings of players/broking agencies/clubs

• Get a share of future top player salaries.
• Get a share of top brokerage commissions.
• Receive a share of the club's winnings.

Core Asset 2: Virtual Asset Product-Limited Edition NFT

For example, NFT players are very powerful and helped me win a league championship in Footballcraft.

Core Asset 3: Signed Cards and Jerseys

Get exclusive signed cards and jerseys before players become superstars. Imagine how crazy the fans would be if we could bring out Yamal's signed jersey when he was 14 years old.

Q9. Will RWA products signed with individual players receive legal

protection? How to ensure that RWA holders can share the benefits they deserve?

sure. The RWA contract is legally binding between players/agencies/clubs and TOPGOAL, complies with legal regulations and respects the rights of players. The agreement ensures that players and RWA holders are able to profit from this new system and must ensure a fair and efficient balance. TOPGOAL and Plume Protocol have established a strategic partnership to provide ongoing cooperation and compliance solutions for the project.

Q10. How is the overall progress of the project? When will it be

implemented?

I'm currently in talks with a few potential partners - we work in the same or different areas, but I think our vision is aligned. More details will be announced in the first quarter of 2025.

Q11. What other plans can you share with the community in the future?

sure! I have many exciting plans to share with the community.

We will share the link to the second phase of the open test on the official X platform, and everyone is welcome to experience Footballcraft. Most importantly, your feedback has the power to drive change.

TOPMARKET's official website will be launched in January 2024, marking the birth of the first RWA platform on the sports track.

We are actively communicating with the exchange where $GOAL is located and will take advantage of the launch of the RWA project to carry out a formal rebranding. We believe the TOPGOAL team can blaze a trail to build a stronger connection with fans.

In the coming year, our focus will be particularly on Europe, South Korea and Japan, which have large football fan bases. We believe that friends in these areas can participate in the game and purchase RWA and tokens through local exchanges - this is a very complete ecosystem experience both in terms of narrative and visuals.