There's something refreshingly authentic about sitting down with Max Rabinovitch, Chief Strategy Officer at Chiliz, that feels more like sharing drinks with an old friend than a formal crypto conference interview. After the whirlwind pace of MINIMAL2049 week, his thoughtful and grounded approach provides a welcome respite from the industry's typical high-octane environment.
You'd never guess from our conversation that Max regularly navigates some of the world's most powerful boardrooms, orchestrating multimillion-dollar deals while shaping the discourse around sensible cryptocurrency regulation.
Unlike countless complicated dApps searching for problems to solve, Chiliz offers refreshingly clear value: as the premier sports blockchain delivering tangible utility to football fans globally. Max elaborates:
“We occupy this unique niche in the crypto ecosystem. We never set out to challenge giants like Solana or Polygon for general-purpose blockchain dominance. We focused laser-like on making one thing work exceptionally well.”
Max acknowledges that building retail-facing utility products as a minority project presents challenges. Retail traders typically chase the glamour, liquidity, and narrative appeal of trending sectors from DeFi applications to NFT collections.
“You must discover alternative incentives to encourage ecosystem development and merchant participation simultaneously.”
Not following hype cycles doesn't diminish Chiliz's unique value proposition. When critics suggest Chiliz “should have embraced NFTs,” Max responds with data:
“Our fan token market cap and daily trading volume exceed the combined NFT trading volume globally. That suggests we're doing something right.”
Unlike projects chasing yield farming, liquid staking, meme coins, or Bitcoin DeFi trends, Chiliz achieved mainstream penetration, becoming a recognized name in sports followed by approximately 73% of the global population. Chiliz partnered with premier sports brands including FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, and Manchester City.
“We've built over 75 distinct micro-economies, with the top 20 remaining incredibly active. Over time, people associate Chiliz with football micro-economies. During World Cup tournaments, Chiliz (CHZ) consistently gains momentum.”
As an American discussing football, Max's European residence shows—he seamlessly switches between “soccer” and “football” without hesitation.
When asked about his team allegiance, he smiles. I anticipate mentioning Manchester United, Real Madrid, or another trophy-laden team attracting international fans. “It took some time,” he admits. “Growing up in America, we followed different sports.”
Max's gaming and poker industry journey brought him to Malta, Europe's iGaming hub, where he discovered football's captivating appeal:
“I arrived friendless,” he recalls. “My first acquaintance was a British gentleman. When relocating to a new country, you lack options. Either stay home or join the Brit who exclusively wanted pub visits to watch Queen's Park Rangers play—a Championship team. I became their supporter by default.”
Max remained loyal, and with “nothing else to do,” spent his initial Maltese months accompanied only by his British QPR-supporting friend, frequenting bars, drinking beer, and watching football.
“We watched every single match that season,” he laughs. “We patronized the same pub consistently. It proved an excellent foundation for British friendship.”
I nod, understanding the necessity of cultivating football passion and Heineken appreciation while socializing with Brits. Max couldn't foresee that those seemingly wasted Malta evenings would prove pivotal to his SportFi journey and Chiliz ecosystem evolution.
Officially launched in 2018, Chiliz ranks among crypto's most established projects. When I note this longevity, Max quickly emphasizes that while Chiliz represents maturity “solely in crypto terms,” it remains young compared to traditional industries.
“Some label us a ‘dino coin’ or dinosaur project... I find this term concerning. When surviving seven years as a business—five of them actively building—earns some kind of longevity Hall of Fame status, it reveals something about our industry.”
It's easy to forget the outside world exists when immersed in crypto's rabbit hole, I suggest, and he laughs, “Exactly—yet remarkably, you're still here.”
Perhaps it's the industry's warped timeline where years feel like decades and weeks like months, or the disproportionate scandals, rug pulls, and hacks. There's also the 90% of ICOs failing since Chiliz's launch that makes our conversation today seem more remarkable than it should. Regardless, longevity proves exception rather than rule.
“We've navigated identical cycles as everyone else, yet survived—and I mean more than survived. We maintained our user base while preserving liquidity, utility, and value in our tokens.”
Chiliz evolved from a permissioned chain focused on fan experiences through retail-facing Socios.com into the premier decentralized Layer 1 blockchain, pioneering SportFi with 2 million unique wallet addresses to date.
“Socios achieved unexpectedly viral growth,” Max admits. “Chiliz as a brand became extremely viral during 2021 when fan tokens exploded during pandemic restrictions, but we essentially built it as proof-of-concept to demonstrate product-market fit for sports.”
While not Chiliz's primary differentiator, Socios' blockchain foundation remains significant. It's “transparently evident” that users interact with blockchain technology when using Socios.com.
“We never attempted to abstract away the crypto experience,” he explains. “To my knowledge, we're the only project creating a centralized DAO with voting and rewards functionality using fungible tokens because we believed this approach would succeed. This model could pivot if we discovered users wanted neither team decision voting nor staking instead of fan-gated experiences.”
Max explains that with “essentially generic assets” like branded fan tokens, uniqueness and utility derive more from the team's authentic engagement than inherent technical features.
“Chiliz's real value comes from the coding process, logistics, and customer support teams handling user requests, collecting tickets, managing merchandise—all easily scalable components. You can essentially pivot the fan base from one use case to another if the initial approach fails.”
I recall early conversations with Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman, who emphasized that Tezos' survival stemmed from adaptability and evolution through industry cycles and narratives.
“We recognized that [adaptability] wouldn't be possible—in flexibility or scalability—if we simply launched an NFT collection. I still believe that.”
From exclusive NFTs to player meetings, what experiences most attract token-holding fans?
“Initially, we were elaborate—offering meet-and-greet experiences, even team charter flights to matches. These were exciting but clearly unscalable. We experimented with digital merchandise, rewards, and Zoom calls to ensure remote fans who couldn't attend physically still received value.”
Over time, the Chiliz team realized they were “overcomplicating unnecessarily.” Ultimately:
“People want tickets. They desire those money-can't-buy experiences: attending league matches, Champions League games, and important fixtures. Regarding fan satisfaction, the final mile is simply watching their team play. We focused on streamlining this process, distributing 12,000 tickets last season.”
Beyond discovering that “launching a Layer 1 is challenging” and competing with highly speculative products requires effort, Max learned that keeping things simple—centering on football love and fan passion—remains Chiliz's crucial strategy.
When fan tokens and experiences surged in 2021/2022, Chiliz approached unlocking America's massive sports market, allocating over $80 million to achieve this. Then FTX collapsed, dragging much of crypto down and slamming doors on Chiliz's major league ambitions.
“We partnered with most NBA teams—28 franchises. We secured agreements with 13 NFL teams, half the NHL, and the entire MLS. We were exceptionally close to launching both Socios and fan tokens across North American leagues, requiring significant team expansion and infrastructure investment.”
But circumstances intervened, and the aggressive regulatory environment following FTX's implosion and crypto's reputational damage pulled the rug from under Chiliz.
“FTX impacted sports enormously through massive stadium naming rights, Major League Baseball sponsorships, and U.S. lobbying. Crypto became reputationally toxic in professional sports and beyond. It stained our industry significantly.”
Despite everything grinding “to a halt” post-collapse, the relationships Max and Chiliz founder/CEO Alex Dreyfus built continued strengthening.
“All those leagues continued supporting us. They consistently viewed us as the adults in the room because we never made enormous revenue guarantees or promised unrealistic returns. The business model simply made sense to everyone. But they said: call us in one to five years. Contact us when administrations change or the SEC adjusts, because we can't touch this currently.”
“We spent the next two years unwinding those contracts and paying all outstanding expenses for nothing. This proved financially painful and hampered business growth.”
With political shifts in Washington, what's Max's perspective on the Trump administration, and how does evolving U.S. regulation impact Chiliz's growth potential?
“I genuinely believe—and Alex concurs—that our industry's future lies in America. The world's largest sports market is American. The largest utility market is American, and we invested significantly entering the U.S. market.”
During Trump's inauguration weekend, he and Alex flew to D.C. to reconnect with contacts and understand regulatory implications.
“Above all, we needed to determine how changes affected us. Could we resume operations? Over subsequent months, it became increasingly clear this represented the right time to relaunch. We began actively re-engaging leagues and teams.”
In fact, Alex visited D.C. just a week and a half ago to meet with the SEC, Max notes, and sat down with Bo Hines at the White House—the 29-year-old former football player on Trump's crypto policy team under 'AI and Crypto Czar' David Sacks.
“We decided we were done licking our wounds. $80 million represents substantial lost investment, but ultimately, this wasn't our fault. What hurt most was failing before we even started—being unable to launch a product.”
When can we expect Chiliz to try again, launching its successful product to capture the American sports market? He shrugs. “I'm no fortune teller,” he smiles…
“But I anticipate this happening within the next 12 months because our discussions with the SEC and White House crypto teams have proven remarkably productive. I believe the administration is ready to begin opening doors to crypto in a meaningful way…”
…And the Chiliz team waits at the starting line, poised for the starting gun.
