Brentford FC had a new addition to its players' shirts when the Premier League squad took the pitch Wednesday against Everton: Chips.
The club formed a partnership with MatchWornShirt, a platform which facilitates the sale of match-worn soccer kits from teams to collectors last year, and this week announced it would be using sister company Fabricks microchips on the team's game-day shirts in an effort to curb counterfeit match-worn memorabilia.
Prior to each match, the chip will be pressed onto each player’s shirt, then “near-field communication" — described as similar to the technology used in contactless credit cards — will be used to allow smartphones to check for information regarding when the shirt was worn and by which player.
Shirts worn in the game are already being sold via auction on MatchWornShirt’s platform, all with a designation they have been authenticated with Fabricks: “Your product also comes with a personal digital certificate that guarantees and protects its identity. A certificate that’s always accessible — you just have to hold your phone to the NFC Chip.”
“We’re delighted to collaborate with Fabricks and become the first-ever English club to introduce this groundbreaking verification technology,” said Adam Ward, head of partnership services of Brentford FC, in a statement, “…bringing a fresh and dynamic element to our MatchWornShirt auctions".
The move is an intriguing development that could be a disruptor in the space, which has seen a boom in recent years, much of which can be attributed to photo-matching, a form of authentication provided by third-party company’s to “match” photos from games to photos of jerseys or other garments, utilizing small details such as loose threads or the positioning of letters on a jersey, to conclude a jersey was definitively “game worn.”
Photo-matching has contributed to large gains in value over recent years, with items sold previously without the documentation being resold with a photo-match for extraordinary multiples — a testament to collector’s trust in the method’s veracity.
However, the biggest photo-matching companies, including MeiGray, Resolution Photomatching and Sports Investors Authentication, rely on humans finding matches between photos, then providing their conclusions in letters accompanying the item.
The concept of integrating technology to trace the provenance of a jersey from start to finish would possibly upend or completely do away with the need for this type of authentication for modern memorabilia — though, of course, it would be unable to challenge the work done by photo-matching companies for older jerseys which never included the technology.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.