I’m Glad There Are No Crypto Super Bowl Ads: Here’s Why

I know. No digitized, high school LeBron James talking about a grim future, no low-budget QR codes bouncing around the screen, no cute shiba inus. It’s a little sad.

But after the year crypto has had, full of spectacular failures of trust, ethics and corporate responsibility (never mind the equally spectacular market crashes), here are some reasons why I think it’s not really that sad and is actually a good thing.

With bitcoin’s price less than half of what it was a year ago, any crypto company, even substantially in the green (if it even exists?) is still concerned with survival. Big, flashy marketing spend can wait. So can the sports wash.

Sportswashing describes groups, companies or nation states that use the global popularity of sports to enhance their reputation by proxy. Consider how Qatar hosted the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world; how the emir of Qatar owns Paris Saint-Germain which brings together three of the world’s most liked athletes (all from different countries with a combined population of 325 million people); how Russia hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the 2014 Winter Olympics; and how China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics.

To be sure, I’m not suggesting that the crypto companies that ran Super Bowl commercials last year are hiding human rights atrocities or anything like that. But as we’ve learned since the last Super Bowl, many of them were hiding something that wasn’t good.

And in the coming year, perhaps the crypto companies that are able to gain ground without taking advantage of these high-profile (and profile-raising) commercial venues will be more fairly evaluated. At least this time their reputations won’t have been enhanced by borrowed glory.

Does this mean the next FTX will not use sports to gain favor? Unlikely. But because at least this year we are off the hook.

The top of the market in any industry is characterized by the exaggerated hubris and long arm of ambition that characterizes the industry’s management class. Splashy and fancy commercials like the Super Bowl are as much about the ego boost of being seen on TV by others and nurturing the “I’ve made it” feeling as they are about smart marketing spend.

It may even be more about the ego.

Crypto executives are no exception, and they may yearn for it more than other executives, given the still-not-quite-mainstream acceptance of the industry as a whole. An association with the most recognizable brands in the world – Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Toyota? Register them.

Where the desire becomes hubris is when we consider whether they even belong. Sure, the companies were flush with cash last year, they were expanding and hiring at a breakneck pace, and they were invited to the tables of the rich and powerful—in government, industry, investment, media—so maybe they did.

But if the very foundation of the company is built on eternal promises of a new paradigm or an untested new frontier of untold riches or, in some cases, massive outright fraud, do you really belong?

At the very least, we should thank our lucky stars: CEOs of crypto companies may not emerge from this year’s Super Bowl with enhanced reputations (and accompanying egos) due to a loose connection to a major event.

They have to stick to earning it instead.