en.cryptonomist.ch
downloadEven Italy’s most successful football club, Juventus, has succumbed to the charms of cryptocurrencies: crypto exchange Bitget is now the sleeve sponsor of the team.
Bitget, the new sleeve sponsor of Juventus
The Turin-based club has announced that it has signed a sponsorship agreement with the well-known Asian exchange, specializing in cryptocurrency derivatives, Bitget, which will be the first sleeve sponsor, i.e. the company brand visible on the sleeve of the uniform.
This is the first warm comment from Giorgio Ricci, Juventus’ Chief Revenue Officer:
“It is a pleasure to welcome Bitget as the first Juventus Sleeve Partner and help them increase their awareness across our fanbase worldwide. We will work together globally and support the Partner’s international growth path by leveraging the mutual desire to address an increasingly broad audience”.
Enthusiasm also transpires in the words of the Singapore-based crypto company. James Lee, Global Strategy Officer at Bitget said:
“Bitget has been looking for outstanding partners from the sports world and game community. Juventus has been fighting hard in the past century, demonstrating the fair, competitive spirit that is expected in sports. The partnership will help Bitget better enhance our international reputation”.
The sponsorship will make its debut at Juventus’ Champions League match against Chelsea.
Football and Crypto: an ever closer relationship
Juventus’ new sponsorship is just the latest example of the growing interest of the sports world in general and football in particular in the world of digital currencies.
There are countless cases of big clubs such as Barcelona, Porto, Roma, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain using the tokens to interact with their fans and merchandise their products.
A small part of the huge salary of Argentinean star Lionel Messi, who has just been signed by Paris Saint Germain, will be paid in tokens from the company.
According to Global data, in the first half of 2021 cryptocurrency companies would have spent over $107 million on sports sponsorship deals.
This year, Crypto.com, already a sponsor of Formula 1, after debuting as a sponsor in the Coppa Italia final last May, has become one of the sponsors of Lega Serie A.
Inter and Roma this year have sponsors from companies in the crypto world on their shirts, such as Digitalbits, specialized in creating digital assets including NFTs, for the Giallorossi, and Chiliz, a blockchain company and world leader in the entertainment and sports sector
A few days ago, the French startup Sorare, a platform for the game of fantasy football using blockchain technology and NFTs, closed a Series B funding round of $680 million, which brings its valuation to $4.3 billion.
This close relationship between digital currencies and the world of sports as a whole is also confirmed by a survey by Morning Consult, a market research firm on technological innovation.
The survey showed that in the United States, 47% of fans were familiar with cryptocurrencies (compared to 39% of non-sports fans) and 27% said they owned them.
There is also an increasing number of cases of sports champions, especially in the US, choosing to be paid in cryptocurrencies, echoing the example of NFL champion Russell Okung, who in 2020 announced that he had requested from his team the Carolina panthers that half of his $13 million salary be paid in bitcoin.
In 2018, the Gibraltar United football team also decided to pay their players’ salaries entirely in cryptocurrencies.