Big Sports Getting Into Crypto

With the pandemic severely hurting ticket sales in the past two years, sports teams and franchises need new ways to generate new revenue. Several exchange platforms have been perfectly capitalizing on this opportunity presented to them, making deals for millions to hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Crypto.com, a large exchange platform with more than 90 coins listed, has been one of the main companies focusing on partnering with big names in sports. They made a $175 million, 10 year deal, which also happens to be UFC’s biggest sponsorship to date. Fighters wear merchandise with the website name “Crypto.com” made very visible and you can also see the website name written on the ground of the fighting arena. Crypto.com made a partnership with F1 starting back in June for $100 million over five years, becoming the first crypto exchange platform to ever partner with an F1 team. These two partnerships alone add up to nearly $300 million, and that isn’t even the end of it.

Recently, Crypto.com has partnered with Paris Saint-Germain, the soccer club, on a 3 year contract worth roughly $30 million dollars. The club has amassed over fifty million followers on Instagram, and is home to some of the most famous soccer players in the world, like Lionel Messi and Neymar. This opens a massive new market for crypto, and is a genius partnership on Crypto.com’s behalf. Soccer is the most popular and watched sport in the world, and with this partnership, more people than ever will be hearing about crypto and have it advertised to them. 

In addition to there being a great advertising opportunity for the platform, they will be releasing exclusive NFTs for the club. They will pay lot of the fees in relation to the deal using CRO, which is the token created by Crypto.com. There is also a PSG fan token now listed on the platform, giving more power to the fans and allowing them to interact more with the team. This is great for both the platform and the team, because sports teams are in need of new ways to interact with and make money from fans after the economic losses of the pandemic. In the next couple of years, Crypto.com will surely continue to gain more important sponsorships, and I am confident it will eventually be as recognizable of a brand as Robinhood. 

In major league baseball this year, umpires were seen wearing the logo of another crypto exchange platform, FTX, on their uniforms. This is the first partnership in the MLB where umpires have an advertisement patch on their uniforms. In the past they have worn the initials of any umpires that passed away that year. FTX now has the right to use any footage of players in order to create content for their brand. FTX is the first crypto exchange to ever partner with the MLB, giving the platform a whole new reach to people in both The United States and internationally. Additionally, it is expected that soon the players will also be wearing the FTX logo somewhere on their uniforms. It’s safe to say that FTX isn’t going anywhere anytime soon with this sponsorship, and it will surely continue to grow and find more ways to integrate cryptocurrency into major league baseball. 

Cryptocurrency is also making its way into the world of Esports. Esports and crypto are two industries that have seen substantial growth in recent years, and show no signs of slowing down. Fnatic is a popular Esports team, based in London, and it recently made a $15 million dollar deal with Crypto.com. With this partnership, Fnatic will be offering crypto based rewards for fans and they will be creating their own exclusive Fnatic NFTs. Fnatic and Crypto.com will work together to create branded online content and real life events in regard to crypto and NFTs. Fnatic will be offering additional services to fans who are curious or uninformed on blockchain and cryptocurrency. I believe this partnership will be the start of a trend towards Esports being entirely based around cryptocurrency. With both of these industries only recently entering mainstream media, if they partner together there are billions of potential dollars to be made. 

All of these partnerships with big name sports franchises and conglomerates further solidify the idea that cryptocurrency is becoming increasingly mainstream. Before 2025 it is highly likely that more major sports teams and brands will continue to adopt cryptocurrency and partner with these exchanges. In the future these types of partnerships can potentially generate hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars because of the rapid growth of both industries.