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Touchdown! Goal! Knockout! Crypto and sports collide in 2021

January 1, 2022No Comments

Cryptocurrencies and sports have continued to collide in 2021 and the synergies between the two have proven fruitful on several fronts.

The relationship between the world of sports and the various applications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has been slowly expanding in recent years. The humble beginnings of simple endorsements that create early brand awareness for exchanges and payment platforms have snowballed into global recognition and cross-industry collaboration, with 2021 seeing a variety of cases. different uses that came to light.

From the basketball courts of the NBA to the soccer fields of Europe, cryptocurrencies continue to generate exposure to new users and markets. In this New Years special, Cointelegraph highlights the growing relationship between cryptocurrencies and sports through 2021.

Here come the NFTs

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become a household word in the last 12 months. The entertainment industry has been at the forefront of this expansion with artists, musicians, celebrities, brands, institutions and content creators diving deep into the NFT craze to serve fans and collectors with their own unique digital collectibles.

Sports have always been a mainstay of the entertainment industry, providing unmatched, unscripted moments that leave an indelible mark on fans around the world.

In the past, one-of-a-kind collectibles and memorabilia gave lucky fans the right to brag about their friends and family. The emergence of NFT has made it a digital domain where fans can acquire, trade, and flaunt valuable NFTs on blockchain-powered markets and platforms.

The NBA has led the way in this regard, turning featured videos of the season's games into NFT collectibles that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through the NBA Top Shot platform. The more expensive NBA Top Shot NFT, a legendary Lebron James dunk card, sold for an incredible $ 230,000 in October 2020. Those numbers are nothing to scoff at. And it only got better in 2021.

The world of American football has also entered the space at both the player and team level. Tom Brady has written himself in the NFL history books and has become a leading figure in the world of business and entertainment as a by-product of his success on the field.

It made headlines in April, launching its own NFT market called autograph. The platform has recruited the biggest names in American sports, as well as influential figures from Hollywood actors, musicians, and other entertainment figures to mint and sell unique digital collectibles.

We're talking about players like golfer great Tiger Woods, sprint sensation Usain Bolt, skateboarding icon Tony Hawk, American gymnast Simone Biles, and of course Brady himself, all offering their own unique NFTs to collectors around the world. world.

Rob Gronkowski, Brady's longtime NFL partner in crime, set the bar high with his own Championship Series. NFT Digital Business Card Auction before the launch of Autograph. The series consisted of four exclusive "GRONK Career Highlight Refractor Cards", each of which had 87 digital editions for sale, while a fifth standalone Career Highlight card was the prize card for the bundle.

The auction lasted two days and saw a total of 349 collectible cards sold at the auction, as well as the unique Career Highlight card to 95 different owners. The total trading value of the auction was 1,014 Ether (ETH) valued at $ 1.8 million at the time of sale. Gronk teamed up with Autograph to launch other NFTs.

English boxer Tyson Fury established himself as the best heavyweight in recent memory after another crushing defeat by Deontay Wilder in October. Following that success, the burly British boxer launched his own NFT which was auctioned for $ 987,000.

In Europe, Sorare has established himself as a leading player in the NFT soccer and fantasy sports space. The Ethereum-powered marketplace facilitates minting and trading of NFTs that have been very popular with soccer fans. Users can buy and trade digital player cards that reflect the performance of their players in real life. Collectors can form a five-man team made up of their digital gamer cards that compete in fantasy leagues.

Socios is the other major player in the world of European football NFTs, digital trading cards and collectibles. The platform allows clubs to issue fan tokens on its proprietary blockchain that allows fans to vote on club decisions, such as team changes, access exclusive content, and participate in other community activities. In 2021, Socios sold $ 250 million in fan tokens since its inception, while the market capitalization of the sports fan token space has increased. increased by 60% in the last six months of the year.

Sports brands are also looking to keep up, and the rise of the Metaverse has pushed two of the world's largest sports brands into the space, courtesy of strategic partnerships with industry participants.

Adidas entered the NFT space minting an NFT that will serve as a digital token that will give Metaverse users access to Adidas digital wearables. The NFT consisted of 30,000 copies, essentially tokens, which were auctioned. Its opening weekend brought in over 11,300 ETH in sales, worth $ 43 million at the time, as Metaverse users flocked to secure their Adidas swag.

Determined to keep up with his competitors, Nike followed suit by acquiring RTFKT, one of the largest NFT collections on Opensea, to create their own wearables and Nike items in the growing Metaverse.

Seen by millions

Marketing and advertising are big business and the world of sports has long been a critical medium for reaching large audiences to market products, services and offerings. Big brands have been doing this for decades to great effect, and cryptocurrency companies and service providers are making the most of it lately.

The Crypto.com brand can be seen on the soccer fields of The most important leagues in Europe, within the massive ufc popular octagon and in the grip circuits Formula 1 roadshow. The company has signed sponsorship agreements with leagues, teams and organizations in all these spaces to reach a wide and varied audience.

Cryptocurrency trader and entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto derivatives trading platform FTX have also enjoyed a good relationship with American sports this year. FTX acquired the naming rights to Miami Heat Stadium in early 2021 in a $ 135 million deal that will last through 2040.

The exchange also secured prime-time commercial airtime for the 2022 NFL Super Bowl, one of America's biggest sporting events, as it seeks to attract new users.

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, scored a big dunk with the NBA after securing a multi-year agreement to be the exclusive partner of the league's cryptocurrency platform and its various subsidiaries, partner leagues and brands.

Rugby is a massive sport in South Africa and the country's Springbok national team has a great base of support being the reigning world champions. When the British and Irish Lions toured South Africa, cryptocurrency exchange Luno published a commercial featuring Springboks director of rugby, Rassie Erasmus. trained viewers on "how easy it is to tackle Bitcoin" as the exchange sought to target a large viewer base to start trading cryptocurrencies on its platform.

This is an excellent example of localized and global advertising bringing cryptocurrencies to broader audiences, which is only set up to introduce more people to a space that hopes to move into mass adoption in the decades to come. 2021 has seen some major groundwork on this front.

Convert that $ into BTC

Several sports stars have started to blaze a path for people to start accepting or allocating a portion of their salaries to receive or buy cryptocurrencies.

NFL players have made headlines again with contributions from Odell Beckham Jr. Y Aaron Rodgers, Trevor lawrence Y Saquon barkley either receiving or investing in cryptocurrencies.

Related: 7 NFL Players Who Chose Crypto Over Cash Salaries

Tom Brady reappears here after acquired an equity stake at Bankman-Fried's FTX which will see him receive crypto payments in addition to being a brand ambassador for the firm.

Australia, Perth Heat Baseball Club signed an agreement with the Bitcoin payment processor OpenNode to pay some of its players and staff in BTC. Once again, adoption is taking place in decentralized parts of the world.

Rare and wonderful

There have been individual cases where cryptocurrencies and the sports world have collided. For the third time, Tom Brady is mentioned and for an equally good reason. In October, Brady became the first NFL quarterback in history to throw 600 touchdown passes. He threw the ball to teammate Mike Evans, who scored the touchdown. The Buccaneers wide receiver threw the ball into the crowd after he scored, handing over a priceless piece of memories to a lucky fan.

During the game, an official managed to chat with the fan and Brady went on to offer the lucky viewer 1 Bitcoin (BTC) to return the historic ball. That 1 BTC was worth $ 62,000, while estimates of the value of the actual ball that completed the milestone were worth between $ 500,000 and a million dollars.

Not everything has been good news with some setbacks until 2021. Manchester City and Barcelona, โ€‹โ€‹recognized in their respective leagues, had to cancel agreements with smaller cryptocurrency firms for different reasons, which served as a reminder that the space is still incipient and that some projects and companies may not comply with the products and services they seek to offer.

Spanish soccer legend Andrรฉs Iniesta was warned online by a Spanish regulator for promoting Binance on their Twitter and Instagram profiles. The National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) warned about "important risks for being unregulated products" in a Tweet on answer hours later.

It's innocuous enough, but it suggests that the integration of cryptocurrencies and associated derivations into the world of sports can sometimes border on the realm of the unknown. Some things work fantastically and gain traction, while others don't enjoy the same success, but the adoption train is still going on.