Which Sports Teams Have Had Crypto and Blockchain Sponsors?
Image: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-pile-of-gold-and-silver-bitcoins-u4kYVIrjM5E
The marriage between cryptocurrency companies and sports teams may have taken a while, but it’s now created some of the most lucrative sponsorships in sporting history. Crypto has found its way to jerseys, stadium naming rights, and individual athletes. The trend may continue to grow, with crypto supporters buoyed by Donald Trump’s second term and the Bitcoin price having reached over $109,000 in January.
England’s Premier League
Soccer has been among the sports to most wholeheartedly embrace crypto. In 2024, Tottenham Hotspur partnered with Kraken in 2024 as their “first-ever Official Crypto and Web3 Partner”. Kraken’s logo is seen by millions on Spurs players’ shirt sleeves during Premier League games.
Spurs are struggling this season, currently in the bottom half of the table, with pressure mounting on Ange Postecoglou. They haven’t finished outside of the top 10 since the 2007-08 season, in which they won the League Cup (their most recent trophy) and reached the last 16 of the UEFA Cup (now the Europa League).
Two years earlier, Manchester City signed a multimillion dollar deal with OKX as their cryptocurrency exchange partner. It was OKX’s first sports deal, announced a few months after City cancelled their agreement with 3Key Technologies.
Man City are also having an unusual season. From late October to November, Pep Guardiola experienced his first ever 5-match losing streak. Though they’ve had better results since 29 December, they lost 9 games in 12, a totally unprecedented run during Guardiola’s time at the club. After City lost to rivals Manchester United in mid-December, Guardiola said, “I’m not good enough. I am the boss, the manager, I have to find solutions, and so far I haven’t.”
City have been by far the most successful team in England since Guardiola joined from Bayern Munich, having won the league in 6 of his 8 seasons. They do, however, await the result of a court case on an alleged 130 breaches of Premier League financial rules, which could possibly result in them being expelled from the league.
The biggest deals in America
The US has seen some of the biggest crypto deals. In 2021, the Los Angeles Lakers’ home arena, formerly the Staples Center, became the Crypto.com Arena in a deal worth $700 million over 20 years. The commitment showed how serious crypto companies were about establishing themselves in sport.
The Lakers haven’t quite managed to win the NBA Playoffs since then. In 2021, they lost in the first round to the Suns. In 2023, they lost the conference finals to the Nuggets, and lost again to the Nuggets in 2024, this time in the first round.
The Philadelphia 76ers also partnered with Crypto.com, with the exchange’s logo on their jerseys and in the arena. The Miami Heat’s arena became the FTX Arena in 2021 (though the deal ended after FTX’s collapse in 2022).
The fall of FTX
FTX collapsing made major waves in 2022. The exchange had signed deals with:
-
Miami Heat (arena naming rights)
-
Mercedes F1 Team
-
Major League Baseball (MLB)
-
And several individual athletes.
These partnerships ended abruptly, leaving teams scrambling to remove FTX branding and find new sponsors. The situation was viewed by some observers as an example of crypto volatility.
The Heat were to receive $2m a year. The arena naming rights were part of a deal between FTX and Miami-Dade County. The Heat recently started a partnership with Kaseya, an IT and security management company.
Which individual athletes have had crypto sponsorships?
When Lionel Messi moved from Barcelona to PSG back in 2021, the deal included fan tokens as part of his “welcome package”.
Also in 2021, when Trevor Lawrence was the no.1 overall pick in the NFL draft, he partnered with Blockfolio (later acquired by FTX) to place part of his bonus in the company.
Tom Brady was sponsored by FTX and appeared in major advertising campaigns before the company collapsed. Steph Curry was also an ambassador and had equity in the company.
In 2020, it was reported that the Carolina Panthers would pay half of the salary of the then-highest paid NFL player, Russell Okung, in Bitcoin. That’s not quite what was happening, as he was actually paid in US dollars before his staff converted some of the money into bitcoin.
Okung has since retired, and in November last year, responded to some who mocked him by posting on X, “society wants to tame you, wants you predictable, but greatness demands wildness.”
Learning from past mistakes
The sports industry has learned lessons from early crypto partnerships. The collapse of FTX has meant teams now conduct more thorough due diligence on potential sponsors.
Crypto companies are still very much involved in sport. In the WNBA, Coinbase began giving $120,000 to the two Cup finalists last season and will do the same this year.
The Athletic reported that “the idea of getting paid in cryptocurrency brought back some difficult memories for women’s sports fans.” In 2021, the NWSL partnered with Voyager, with the company to fund crypto accounts for all NWSL players. Voyager went bankrupt a few months later, leaving players out of any crypto they’d earned, according to Sportico.
As the crypto industry continues to grow in 2025, we’ll likely see more sophisticated partnerships blending traditional sponsorship with blockchain applications.