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As the new currency kid on the block, crypto has always been battling for relevancy and status alongside fiat options. Crypto investors are always on the lookout to expand and diversify by increasing brand awareness, and sport is one new area which has been targeted by digital currency businesses. One sport in particular, football, had attracted the largest share of that cryptocurrency business.
But why has the world of strategic partnerships with sports entities proven to be a big avenue for cryptocurrency to attach itself to? Here's a look at how the world’s most technological currency advancement has meshed with a sport that is steeped in history and tradition.
Football is a vast global industry. It has a bigger fan base than any other sport on the planet. Every day, millions of fans watch matches, whether in packed stadiums or through screens across the world. And its influence extends far beyond the pitch. It’s also one of the most popular sports for betting. Just visit any top-tier bookmaker from the expert-reviewed selections at Legalbet, a site dedicated to reviewing and comparing licensed sportsbooks, and you’ll find football front and centre in the list of popular sports, with thousands of betting markets available for top-tier matches.
It is therefore understandable why 43% of all crypto and digital asset sponsorship in sports across the 2024/25 financial year happened in football alone. It equated to a staggering growth of more than 64% of crypto/digital asset sponsorships in football year-over-year.
Football isn't the only area of sport that showed growth in partnerships with crypto businesses, with Formula 1 rising to 28% year-over-year, and baseball rising to 18%. Overall, more and more crypto is finding its way into this valuable avenue.
The Champions League is one of the biggest football tournaments in the world, and last year the governing body UEFA announced a new sponsorship deal that it had forged with Crypto.com, which became the first crypto sponsor of the tournament.
It was a multi-year partnership deal, bringing crypto and football together on one of the biggest stages of all. A similar deal almost happened between the two parties a couple of years ago, but because of the 2022 crypto crash and confusion over regulations for branding opportunities across different European markets, it didn’t happen.
Crypto.com, though, had already gotten its foot in the door of football exposure back then, because it was a sponsored partner of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Along with that, the crypto business has also been active in dealing with the high-profile UFC and Formula One.
The reason why cryptocurrency has looked and sports and thought that it is a good place to look for deals is easy to understand. It’s all about exposure. The recent sponsorship agreement with UEFA saw the cryptocurrency business gain tremendous exposure by having its name put in front of a massive global audience. The deal included in-stadium branding for all 2024/25 Champions League fixtures, along with advertising campaigns and broadcast integrations. Professional sport has long been a great marketing platform, and now crypto is fully on board.
Teams like Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain have penned fairly recent partnership deals with digital currency platforms, namely Kraken and Bitpanda, respectively. Kraken, who also took a deal with Atletico Madrid, got themselves a precious advertising spot on the shirt sleeves of Spurs.
The most common way that crypto companies are investing in sports is through shirt sponsorship deals. Last season alone, more than 35% of all crypto exchange deals within sports were for shirt sponsorships, which was an increase of more than double the amount there was before.
Of all the agreements that happened last season, 44% of the crypto deals went to teams operating across the big five leagues within Europe, namely the Premier League, Germany’s Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, and France’s Ligue 1.
Again, this is nothing surprising or groundbreaking because top football leagues like the Premier League and Bundesliga are the most watched in the world. Cryptocurrency businesses link up with such influential leagues to expand their reach and get that high-quality exposure not only in Europe but across the world.
Matches from the top leagues are broadcast around the world, and teams take pre-season marketing tours to hit their own fan bases, and that’s a massive market for crypto business to put their stamp on.
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