Crypto Corner: The Sports Slice

Bear market, watch out? Or is the market’s persistence enough to keep sports involvement alive? So far into an average 2022, there has been more of the latter than the former. Crypto firms remain at the heart of many of the biggest sports sponsorship conversations, athlete involvement in the space continues to build, and there are new NFT efforts from sports properties around the world.

This past week saw a little bit of all that action – and every weekend we review all of the past week’s crypto sporting action with ‘The sports disc.’ We’re on an extended Labor Day edition this week, but there’s still plenty of action to cover—let’s dive in.

The sports disc

Crypto.com will reportedly drop out of the UEFA deal at 11am

A five-year, $495 million deal is no small discussion in any sponsorship category. These were the rumored terms of a sports sponsorship deal between cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and UEFA’s Champions League, according to a report by Sports Business Journal (with sources from The Athletic as well) recently.

However, concerns over the European regulatory landscape have led the crypto exchange, which has amassed one of the largest sports sponsorship portfolios in crypto, to pull out of the deal at the “last minute”. The exchange was to replace Russian energy supplier Gazprom, which was separated from the league after the war in Ukraine.

While European clubs such as Chelsea and Atletico Madrid have signed team-specific crypto agreements, there have remained vocal concerns from players in the EU market about how regulations could limit both sponsorship and the crypto market at large. A prime example of this can be seen with Arsenal, who have battled back and forth with advertising regulations over the past year (and which we covered in a Slice report last month).

Bloomberg: The crypto market remains positive with sports sponsorship

Apart from the bear market, the crypto market is still active in sports sponsorship. That’s the latest perspective from a new report from Bloomberg, which described the breadth of sports involvement — from the “big four” of American major league sports (NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB) to European soccer, to Formula 1, and much more .

Jersey offers, training packages, arena sponsorship. Deals add up to over $2B in sports advertising, in what is seen by traditional sponsorship experts as essentially an entirely new sponsorship category. It is not often that we see the emergence of completely new verticals within sponsorship – and certainly not to this extent. As the Bloomberg team notes, this category doesn’t typically compete with other sponsorship categories either – which has led to a flood of interest from players, teams and leagues across all sports to dip their toes in the water.

The biggest deal yet? Crypto.com’s $700 million naming rights deal for the former Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Algorand (ALGO) has been a sleepy player in the sports space, typically targeting non-traditional sports such as drone racing and chess, however their flagship partnership with FIFA could prove to be their biggest execution in sports yet. | Source: ALGO-USD on TradingView.com

Eagles’ Devonta Smith seals new NFT shoe deal

The NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles are looking to fly high on the heels of the upcoming season opener this weekend. The Eagles’ wide receiver starts the season with a new deal with Endstate, a sneaker company that connects ownership with NFTs. Endstate is new to the scene, but has a team of sneaker veterans. However, they are not the first to connect sneakers with NFTs, as a number of projects, such as Solana’s STEPN, are cross-pollinating sneakers and NFTs. Talent could prove to play a big role, so we’ll see how that shakes out for Smith and the Endstate team.

FIFA and Algorand launch NFT Marketplace

Earlier this year FIFA announced a formal relationship with the Algorand network – and this past week we saw the first real tangible movement of something big coming from the two. FIFA is scheduled to release ‘FIFA+ Collect’ on Algorand this month, the governing body’s first version of an NFT platform.

The platform will contain art, images and great playing moments in the sport’s history.

Featured image from Pexels, Charts from TradingView.com

The writer of this content is not associated or affiliated with any of the parties mentioned in this article. This is not financial advice.

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