Bitcoin & Soccer: The Rise of Cryptocurrency Sponsorships and Partnerships
Bitcoin’s recent parabolic market performance has garnered significant attention for the entire cryptocurrency market. This is both reasonable and expected behavior. Since its 2009 inception, the whole market has traditionally followed Bitcoin, and to a lesser extent, Ethereum.
The significant difference this time lies primarily in the fact that cryptocurrency is seeing enormous gains in attention from mainstream media channels. Gone are the days when the only access to reliable cryptocurrency news was from crypto-specific websites and media outlets.
Today, cryptocurrency happenings can be regularly found on the pages of major web outlets, including Yahoo Finance and Forbes.
Cryptocurrency and Soccer
With this type of increased media attention come greater opportunities for moving into new and promising advertising markets. For example, soccer teams in Europe are beginning to collaborate with different crypto projects, including but not limited to sponsorships.
This is positive news for both the blockchain economy and the sports industry. Blockchain projects are experiencing increased visibility in an entirely new space. The sports industry has the opportunity to benefit from various product and service offerings uniquely to the blockchain technology. These include convenience, increased accountability, and fast transactions, among others.
One of the first major blockchain and cryptocurrency collaborations was between Rimini FC 1912, an Italian Serie C soccer club, and blockchain venture Quantocoin. The blockchain technology project offers exchanges, trading, and remittance payments for a potential client base of 2 billion people.
Quantocoin purchased 25 percent of Rimini, making the purchase entirely with cryptocurrency, precisely its native token, the Quantocoin (QRCt). This is significant, as it was the first time that a soccer team was purchased using cryptocurrency.
The Quantocoin mission is to continue along this trajectory, making many more sports-related purchases with cryptocurrency.
According to recent reports, English Premier League club Newcastle United has also partnered with a blockchain project, StormGain. The Newcastle team is well known across Europe, making this a valuable collaboration for StormGain, a platform offering cryptocurrency margin trading.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with an exciting and a leading soccer club such as Newcastle United. We believe the collaboration of cryptocurrencies and mainstream sports is inevitable. Therefore it’s a privilege and an honor for StormGain to be the spearhead of the blockchain community colliding with mainstream sports”, says CEO of StormGain Alex Althausen.
Another intersting blockchain – soccer collaboration is coming from Portugal. The famous S.L. Benfica took immediate notice of this opportunity, announcing in early June 2019 that its merchandise will now be available for purchase in cryptocurrency. Benfica accepts primary tokens Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) as well as UTRUST token (UTK).
CoinMarketCap, which provides data analytics services to the cryptocurrency market, also recently jumped into a sports-based partnership. Israel’s Beitar Jerusalem now wears the CoinMarketCap brand prominently during its matches. Moshe Hogeg, the new owner of the club, is a well-established cryptocurrency pioneer and entrepreneur.
Advertising too
Other recent partnerships with football clubs, such as CoinDeal’s Wolverhampton Wanderers recent sponsorship renewal, mean that this type of exposure for cryptocurrency is growing and being more widely accepted in mass markets such as sports.
In January, DX Exchange was advertised prominently during a Barcelona football game, leading to tweets of support and encouragement from DX Exchange Co-Founder and CEO, Daniel Skowronski.
As the cryptocurrency world finds renewed hope and power in its long-anticipated turnaround out of the 2018 bear market, it seems as if all news is good news, at least for now. These alliances with major sports franchises within the football world are undoubtedly great news, for supporters of football and blockchain technology alike.
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