Back in February 2022, we arguably witnessed the peak of cryptocurrency fervor.
Yes, the market has broadly picked up over the last 12 months and there may be bigger things to come.
But in terms of retail hype, Super Bowl LVI – sometimes known as the “Crypto Bowl” – felt like the crest of a wave for crypto brands.
Coinbase, Crypto.com, eToro, and, of course, FTX went big on the Super Bowl, pulling in celebrities and pulling off gimmicks (Coinbase’s bouncing QR code was a notable success) to signal their arrival to the mainstream.
Crypto, of course, was somewhat auspiciously absent from future Super Bowls.
The Crypto Winter, as well as the collapse of FTX, largely put paid to that.
But while the fervor has largely dissipated, marketing tactics have evolved rather than disappeared.
Turn on Fox Business, for example, and you might see an advertisement for BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF, with the world’s largest hedge fund targeting ‘mature’ investors looking for steady gains rather than the wild ride of crypto trading.
Champions League shows how sponsorship is changing
And then there was the recent announcement of Crypto.com’s partnership with the UEFA Champions League.
Make no mistake about it: this is a big deal, one that points to a confidence in the longevity of the crypto sector.
It is arguably much more significant than the sponsorship of a Super Bowl or the renaming of the home of the LA Lakers from the Staples Center to the Crypto.com Arena.
Those brandings usually focus on an American audience, and rightly so: the Champions League speaks to a global one.
Its partners, past and present, are exclusively global powerhouses, marketing products you can buy in Pittsburgh, Paris, Perth, and Phnom Penh.
McDonald’s, Ford, Sony PlayStation, and Heineken are among the brands that have been long-term major sponsors of the Champions League.
Casino brands and blockchains in the Premier League
Of course, you might argue that it is interesting to chart the evolution of sponsorship itself.
In the Premier League, which remains the world’s most popular sports competition by a distance, the changes have been notable.
Manchester United players wear the Tezos logo on their training kits, for instance, Tottenham Hotspur secured a deal with the Kraken crypto exchange.
Numerous online casino and sports betting brands have adorned shirts and stadium billboards across the Premier League.
Yet, it feels like a gear-shift with Crypto.com’s entry into the Champions League.
For non-Europeans, or at least those who have not watched the Champions League religiously over the last 30 years, it may be difficult to stress just how intertwined the television coverage is with the principal sponsors.
Fans associate certain Heineken and PlayStation ads with the competition just as much as they do the fabled Champions League anthem that plays before every game and of which a short snippet is heard during every ad break.
An expensive outlay for Crypto.com
And as mentioned, there is the longevity of the sponsorship deals.
Crypto.com’s deal runs from 2024 to 2027, and it is mooted to cost around half a billion dollars.
A similar deal was almost agreed in 2022, but the EU regulators put up several roadblocks.
The fact the notoriously fussy bloc has relented this time around is also significant.
Right now, as Bitcoin sits under ATH and benefits from the tailwinds of ETFs, crypto remains in a curious position.
Many of the narratives, particularly NFTs that drove the fervor of 2021 and early 2022 seem to have been left behind.
The web3 revolution, or at least the narrative of it, seems to have been supplanted by AI.
Crypto is looking for an identity beyond the process of trading in and of itself.
As such, it will be interesting to see what the sector looks like in 2027 when Crypto.com’s cycle as a main sponsor of the Champions League comes to an end.
But for now, it speaks of confidence that the sector has matured and has a big future ahead of it.
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