- At the beginning of the Premier League 2024/25 season, sponsorship deals involving crypto firms and Premier League clubs were worth some £130 million ($170 million)
- Experts say the uptick is largely attributed to crypto firms' drive to reach more customers and build trust after the 2022 market crisis
- In 2019, the FA introduced a regulation that banned gambling ads on television during games.
Football clubs in the top tier of the English league, the Premier League, secured crypto sponsorship deals worth some £130 million in 2024 alone. This significant surge comes just two years after what experts describe as a global crypto downturn, which affected the valuation of several crypto firms and caused a massive decline in token values.
Data from SportQuake, as quoted by Bloomberg, shows that at the beginning of the Premier League 2024/25 season, sponsorship deals involving crypto firms and Premier League clubs were worth some £130 million ($170 million). This amount is likely to increase before the end of the season as more deals are anticipated.
Source: SportQuake
Experts say the uptick is largely attributed to crypto firms' drive to reach more customers and build trust after the 2022 market crisis. Another critical factor is the Football Association’s strict regulations on gambling sponsorships last year. Until the tightening, gambling sponsorship was a major revenue stream for clubs.
In 2019, the FA introduced a regulation that banned gambling ads on television during games. By 2026, clubs will no longer be allowed to use betting sponsors on front-of-shirt spot on kits.
“There’s been a real shift toward limiting visible gambling sponsorship. There’s been an incentive in general for football teams to start seeking out new categories of sponsorship, because obviously that that was quite a lucrative stream — the biggest single industry putting money into the sport,” Daniel McDonagh, an associate at UK law firm Charles Russell Speechlys Llp said via Bloomberg.
SportQuake CEO Matt House claims that because of the regulatory crackdown, there was previously some hesitancy around transactions, but that has since changed and businesses are now “comfortable about what they can do.”
He continued by saying that brands are telling agencies, “We are not actually pushing direct sales messages; we are just going to use the Premier League to drive a brand message.”
Dealing with cryptocurrency companies is not risk-free, though. For allegedly offering unlicensed gambling services, regulators are pursuing Sorare, a French NFT company that in 2023 reached a four-year agreement with the Premier League for a fantasy football game. The firm disputes the allegations.
How FBI seized $6 million crypto assets from scammers
Meanwhile, TheRadar earlier reported that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confiscated crypto assets worth over $6 million from specialist cryptocurrency scammers who targeted US residents.
The scammers defrauded US residents and citizens from their base in Southeast Asia. According to the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, there was a rising number of fraud cases in the nation, and one or more people lost millions of dollars after being duped into investing in what seemed to be reputable schemes.
