If you tuned in to the 2022 Super Bowl, you would have seen Larry David in an ad for crypto exchange FTX, playing a crypto-skeptic who wasn’t sure the platform would ever take off. As it turns out, he was right.
In November, FTX filed for bankruptcy and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest with his parents in Palo Alto, California on fraud charges. But it’s not just an FTX ad that won’t air at the Super Bowl this year. No crypto ads will, according to a report from…
If you tuned in to the 2022 Super Bowl, you would have seen Larry David in an ad for crypto exchange FTX, playing a crypto-skeptic who wasn’t sure the platform would ever take off. As it turns out, he was right.
In November, FTX filed for bankruptcy and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest with his parents in Palo Alto, California on fraud charges. But it’s not just an FTX ad that won’t air at the Super Bowl this year. No crypto ads will, according to an AP report published earlier this week.
Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles takes place on Sunday, and nearly 100 million people typically tune in for the national football championship. Advertising spending is high, with some companies shelling out around $7 million for a 30-second spot.
Last year’s game was called the “Crypto Bowl” after four major crypto companies -FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro – bought advertising spots. At the time, crypto companies were trying to break into the mainstream. FTX’s celebrity endorsers in 2022 included Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka and Kevin O’Leary. Bankman-Fried was seen as a white knight in crypto, appeared before the US Congress to advocate for some regulation in the industry, and publicly discussed effective altruism and his philanthropic efforts in interviews.
That was until November 2022, when FTX filed for bankruptcy, and Bankman-Fried wiped out his $16 billion fortune in less than a week.
Recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has cracked down on crypto exchanges. This week, Kraken was fined $30 million for failing to register the offering and sale of its staking-as-a-service program for cryptoassets. In August, Coinbase was investigated by federal regulators regarding crypto dividends and staking products. In 2022, victims lost over $3 billion from crypto hacks and scams, and crypto lawsuits increased by 46% in 2022, according to a recent analysis by HedgeWithCrypto, a crypto research firm.
All of this has contributed to skepticism towards the industry, with a report stating that 72% of institutional traders have no plans to trade crypto this year.
Two crypto advertisers had ordered commercials and two more were about to order, Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, told the AP. But when the FTX news broke, those deals weren’t completed. This year, you’ll see beer ads instead, with Anheuser-Busch still the biggest spender.
