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How Soccer’s Crypto Boom Fell Apart
How Soccer’s Crypto Boom Fell Apart
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0:00
In 2021, Inter Milan signed one of the biggest crypto sponsorship deals in European football.
0:07
The partnership was with DigitalBits, a crypto and blockchain company.
0:11
The four-year deal was worth 85 million euros.
0:15
In return, DigitalBits became Inter's front of shirt sponsor,
0:19
putting its brand in front of millions of football fans around the world.
0:23
But the deal soon unraveled. Inter later disclosed in its financial
0:27
results that DigitalBits had not paid the 24 million euro base fee due for
0:32
the 2022/23 season - or another 1.25 million euros in performance bonuses.
0:38
The DigitalBits Foundation later said the sponsorship agreements were made by
0:43
Zytara Labs, not the foundation, and that to its knowledge, the partnerships had been terminated.
0:49
The club took the logo off its website and billboards
0:52
and eventually from the front of its shirts.
0:54
AS Roma, which also had a deal with DigitalBits,
0:58
removed the brand from its kit as well. Italian media reported that Roma's move
1:02
followed missed sponsorship payments. But this wasn't just a DigitalBits problem. Across the
1:08
crypto industry, the market was turning - and football was feeling the impact.
1:16
In July 2021, Bitcoin surged to a high of nearly
1:20
$69,000 dollars, reflecting a wave of optimism around the wider crypto market.
1:26
But by November 2022, Bitcoin had lost more than 70% of its value from its peak.
1:32
At the height of that boom, football had become one of crypto's biggest
1:36
marketing battlegrounds. Clubs offered global audiences, shirt visibility, and credibility.
1:42
Crypto companies brought cash.
1:45
As prices fell, parts of the digital asset industry came under severe pressure. Several
1:50
crypto firms collapsed, filed for bankruptcy, or ran into financial trouble. And many had
1:56
multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals with sports teams around the world.
2:00
The biggest domino was the crypto exchange FTX, which had sponsorship deals with Major League
2:06
Baseball and the Mercedes Formula 1 team, and held naming rights to the Miami Heat's home arena.
2:12
What we've been doing so far has mostly been trying to establish our brand. We're
2:16
coming from behind in terms of user adoption and name recognition. And so, we're really
2:20
just trying to form partnerships to tell the story of who we are.
2:23
But for football, the exposure went beyond
2:26
shirt sponsorships. Supporters had bought into the boom too.
2:30
Across Europe, clubs struck multi-million-dollar partnerships with crypto firms. Some were
2:35
traditional shirt and sleeve sponsorships. Others were entirely new products like fan tokens.
2:43
Think of fan tokens as digital membership cards. They gave supporters perks like VIP experiences,
2:50
exclusive content, and the chance to vote in club polls. But because they
2:54
could also be bought and sold on an open market, their price could rise or fall.
3:01
Rob Wilson is the Dean at University Campus of Football Business.
3:05
The access arrangements were actually quite enticing,
3:08
weren't they? Being able to observe training sessions, consume games in
3:12
a slightly different way, benefit from really unique opportunities associated with those NFTs.
3:18
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital assets recorded on a blockchain,
3:24
often sold as collectibles, access passes, or digital memorabilia.
3:29
Fan tokens worked differently, but they were part of the same Web3 push - digital
3:34
products marketed as a way to bring supporters closer to their clubs.
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To launch these tokens, clubs partnered with specialist crypto
3:42
companies that built and operated the platforms where fans could trade them.
3:47
One of the biggest players was Chiliz,
3:49
whose Socios.com platform became a marketplace for official club fan tokens.
3:55
A high-profile example was Barcelona. It launched its official $BAR Fan Token in 2020.
4:02
The club's original announcement said
4:04
the partnership would let fans interact with Barca in new ways.
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At launch, the tokens were offered at €2 euros each.
4:11
Barcelona said that after the initial sale, the price would depend on demand and supply.
4:17
Socios' own launch material went further. It said fan tokens were limited in number,
4:21
could be traded, and that their price was driven by the market.
4:25
The demand was immediate. Within hours, the first
4:28
600,000 $BAR tokens sold out, generating around $1.3 million.
4:34
Over the next 2 years, Socios said more than $39 million worth of $BAR Fan Tokens have been sold.
4:41
For clubs looking for new revenue, it looked like a breakthrough.
4:45
Kieran Maguire is Professor of Football Finance at the University of Liverpool.
4:49
The lure of the cash was so great, and it was seen as such a get-rich-quick scheme that there was
4:56
that sort of Klondike-like rush to go to tokens, but there was nothing really to back them up.
5:02
Under the model, Barcelona and Chiliz could make money from the initial sale
5:06
and from trading activity. But if the token price later fell,
5:10
the direct market loss sat with the people holding the tokens.
5:14
For fans who bought in, it was a very different story.
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Clubs marketed fan tokens as a new way to engage supporters. But because they could
5:23
be traded like cryptocurrencies, many quickly became speculative assets too.
5:28
Once trading began, $BAR climbed sharply from its initial offering price,
5:32
briefly pushing towards $60 before beginning a long slide.
5:36
By 2026, it was trading at around 30 cents.
5:40
And across selected fan tokens linked to some of Europe's biggest clubs, the pattern was similar.
5:45
Short-lived spikes followed by a long slide.
5:50
Socios' own UK risk summary now warns that fan token prices can swing sharply,
5:56
and if there aren't enough buyers or sellers,
5:58
people may not be able to trade when they want, or at the price they expect.
6:03
As prices fell, regulators and supporter groups began
6:06
asking whether fans really understood the risks.
6:09
The misunderstanding around how they could be traded,
6:13
coupled with the crash in value because they were so, so hyped up at the time of purchase,
6:19
meant that the whole sector has really taken it a step back from what it could have been.
6:24
Do we think that the fan tokens have maybe pulled the wool over the fans
6:29
eyes as to what they were actually investing in?
6:30
I would be cautious about using the word investment. For me,
6:33
it was a classic example of the find a bigger fool theory in the sense that if
6:38
you were going to try to maintain the value of the tokens, you had to find somebody who
6:42
was willing to buy them from you. And what we saw was that there
6:46
was very much a rug-pull as far as the launch of these schemes were concerned.
6:51
The education certainly wasn't there to support the decisions that fans were making. My personal
6:57
view is that NFTs have a part to play in the next 10, 15, 20 years of the football ecosystem,
7:03
but that'll be very different to what we saw over the last five years because we have
7:07
essentially been burned, haven't we, from some of those deals and fans have lost money.
7:11
As fan token prices fell sharply and some crypto companies failed,
7:16
regulators in Europe began increasing scrutiny, blocking access to unauthorized crypto asset
7:21
websites in some markets, and cracking down on unlawful promotions aimed at retail consumers.
7:27
In the UK, that scrutiny has now reached football clubs themselves.
7:31
The Financial Conduct Authority has warned clubs
7:34
about sponsorship deals with unauthorized crypto exchanges and trading platforms.
7:39
The regulator said those deals can give legitimacy to firms operating
7:44
outside the rules and may expose fans to harm.
7:48
You've only got to look at the number of crypto companies which have completely
7:53
disappeared for the FCA to want to be seen to be trying to not persuade people to not
8:01
invest them but persuade people to do their own individual due diligence.
8:06
One crypto platform still leaning into sport is Bitpanda. Headquartered in
8:11
Austria, the company says it holds multiple European crypto licenses,
8:15
and its UK entity is registered with the FCA for certain crypto asset activities.
8:20
Bitpanda argues that not all crypto marketing should be treated the same.
8:25
So, we never try to throw a message onto the customers and say trade now,
8:30
invest now, or do this and that now.
8:33
We want to leave it to the customers what their appetite, risk appetite is in general.
8:37
And this is why, all we can do is to build up a strong and trusted brand and this is
8:42
perfectly done by our partnerships and by working together in a responsible way and
8:47
manner with clubs which also have a strong history, which also have a strong record of
8:51
credibility. And this is also why we have chosen those clubs and maybe not others.
8:55
Bitpanda has partnerships across sport including with Arsenal.
8:59
In 2025, the London Premier League club named it Official Crypto Trading Partner.
9:04
We've got clubs as high-profile as Arsenal. If you go to London and you're on a tube train,
9:10
you will see smiling Arsenal players with various crypto organizations.
9:15
Arsenal has faced scrutiny over crypto marketing before.
9:19
In 2021, the UK advertising watchdog ruled two of its fan token promotions broke ad rules.
9:26
The club said the tokens were intended for fan engagement,
9:29
not investment, and that it had provided risk warnings.
9:34
The first crypto sponsorship boom may be over, but football's relationship with
9:39
digital assets is not. And for one English club, crypto became more than a sponsor.
9:44
It became the foundation of an entirely new business model. That's in the next episode.
