Crypto Corner: The Sports Slice
After last week’s Slice covered the extension of the existing sports agreement between the crypto exchange OKX and the powerful football club Manchester City, we have gained more in our weekly dose of action with big football clubs and blockchain companies.
Let’s dive into all the big headlines in the sports and crypto landscape from last week.
The sports disc
WhaleFin will pay $ 42 million for the deal with Atletico Madrid
Move aside, Manchester City. It is the Spanish club Atletico Madrid that dominates the sports sponsorship and the crypto chat last week, when they secured WhaleFin as their latest suit sponsor. Man City was the story told from last weekend Sports disc report, which counteracts the trend of sports sponsorship with crypto companies that had gone from high-flying to simmering down; Man City’s agreement with exchange OKX was extended to include training kits, albeit with no revealed financial implications.
Meanwhile, for Atletico, the club’s top flight league is LaLiga, no stranger to Sports disc appearances, as the league has been working on an NFT marketplace with Dapper Labs for a product that is the Spanish football equivalent of basketball’s Top Shot or football’s All Day – both produced by Dapper Labs.
WAGMI United seem to give fans a voice
We’ve covered the saga of WAGMI United, the newly budding League Two (but ambitious Premier League) club that underwent acquisitions and rebranding from its former Crawley Town identity, for some time now in The Sports Slice. We are back with more this week as well.
A new report from BBC Sport covers how Crawley Town runs the case study of DAO model functions in sports clubs. The club launched NFTs earlier this month priced at 0.35 ETH, and has sold about 10,000 of the “virtual season tickets.” After starting the season with a couple of draws, the club has let season card holders and NFT holders vote on whether the team should change focus to strengthen the attack, midfield or defense.
Unique contact points for fans will often dominate the excitement almost as much as the performance on the pitch, and WAGMI United want to turn and burn on both sides of that coin to bring something special unique to the football game.
Related reading | Decentralized Credit Counter Cred Protocol releases automated scoring results
It's still a long road left to travel for fan tokens for sports clubs, including Spanish club Atletico Madrid and their token, ATM. That hasn't slowed down the club's crypto enthusiasm, however, as Atletico signed on WhaleFin as a major shirt sponsor this past week. | Source: ATM-USDT on TradingView.com
A new token’s impact on the F1 league for women
NFTs have proven to be an important point of influence across a range of sports, both traditional stick-and-ball and non-traditional sports.
The young W-Series Racing League is a one-seater racing league for women consisting of 18 drivers. CortDAO, or ‘Community Owned Racing Team DAO’, aims to bring decentralization to the W-Series and recently launched a new NFT and aims to bring equity to F1 at a time when the sport is flourishing. An interview with the Philippine outlet PhilStar.com outlines DAO’s perspective.
Racing in general has been particularly warm and welcome to crypto agreements, and as the sport grows, so should the sponsorship agreements in it.
Another sports perspective from the Voyager downfall
We’d spent some time looking at the potential sponsorship implications between failed crypto platforms and projects and sports clubs and leagues, but Fortune took the time this past week to look at it from a different angle – the players who qualified for bonuses via these platforms and the pro club employees who were entitled to funds that are now unavailable.
While Voyager sails the ship into bankruptcy proceedings, it is unknown what remains of user funds when the dust settles. It is a friendly reminder that many users were on board through partnerships like these, and that many will be left with inevitably bad taste in their mouths after this type of experience.
Voyager has joined the likes of CeFi headliners, such as BlockFi and Celsius, to meet incredible headwinds over bear market conditions in recent months. BlockFi is on the verge of a probable acquisition from FTX, but under conditions that will lead to venture capital investors getting a big hit, and Celsius is in the same boat as Voyager – bankruptcy petition – except with a potential gap of 1 billion dollars in its balance sheet.
Related reading | NFTs in a nutshell: A weekly review
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.
