Italian football’s Serie A and cryptocurrency payments platform Crypto.com today announced a partnership agreement. Crypto.com will become a sponsor for the 2021 Coppa Italia Final, where Atalanta will face off with Italian giants Juventus on May 19.
“We are extremely proud to announce this prestigious partnership with Crypto.com, a leading company in the world of cryptocurrencies and NFTs,” said Luigi De Siervo, Lega Serie A CEO, adding, “Lega Serie A aims to expand its target audience and continues the international growth of the brand, always looking to the future of innovation.”
⚽️We’re proud to announce that we’re the first cryptocurrency and #NFT partner of @SerieA, the Italian Football league.
The partnership will begin on the day of the Coppa Italia Final, although according to the announcement, it is expected to last “long into the future.”
This is the first time Atalanta meets Juventus in the Coppa Italia Final, and as part of the occasion, an NFT collection is also being created. The collection will include highlights of the game itself, and a non-fungible token (NFT) of the Coppa Italia trophy.
“We are proud to collaborate with an exceptional partner such as Lega Serie A,” said Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com, adding, “It’s a unique opportunity to support the world’s most popular sport during the historic match between Atalanta and Juventus, surely to be watched by football fans worldwide.”
Crypto.com was founded in 2016, and currently serves over 100 million customers worldwide as a cryptocurrency payments platform.
NFTs and sports
This is not the first time NFTs have entered the sporting arena. The cryptographically-unique tokens are linked to digital content such as artwork or music, and with their provable scarcity, they’re a natural successor to the physical trading cards that have long been collected by sports fans.
English Premier League soccer club Southampton FC has secured a new deal with Bitcoin sports betting firm Sportsbet.io as their main club partner, which includes the option for the club to be paid performance-based bonuses in Bitcoin.
The deal will see the crypto-friendly betting platform continue as the club’s shirt sponsor for the next three years. While the financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Southampton FC confirmed that if the club feels that Bitcoin as a “new, high-growth...
Fantasy soccer game Sorare has been at the forefront of the game's relationship with NFTs. By June of last year, every Major League Soccer player had been tokenized in the game, and massive clubs like Real Madrid have joined Sorare’s roster.
Outside of NFTs, the soccer world is getting increasingly involved with crypto; Premier League club Southampton recently announced that performance bonuses were to be made available in Bitcoin, while Manchester City has launched $CITY fan tokens.
What do Afghanistan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Cuba and North Korea all have in common?
Give up? They’re the only five countries out of the 193 recognized by the UN that had no TV coverage of the 2018/19 Premier League soccer season.
Evidently the beautiful game has never been more popular, but for every fan in the stands at Old Trafford, Anfield or Stamford Bridge, there are many more scattered around the globe.
These fans might live thousands of miles from where their chosen teams play, but as...
In the United States—where soccer trails in popularity compared to football, basketball and baseball—NFTs are being released by some of the country’s biggest sporting names and brands.
In baseball, Red Sox hall of fame legend Ted Williams has been immortalized by an NFT collection spearheaded by his daughter, while the NFL’s Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady have jumped on the NFT bandwagon.
Basketball-themed trading card series NBA Top Shot has become a household name in crypto, but individual teams are launching their own NFT collections too;. The Golden State Warriors, which released their own range of NFT-based digital collectibles, called them a "mainstay to engage our fans around the world."
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Stripe is making a renewed push into crypto and artificial intelligence, unveiling a slate of new features at its annual user event on Wednesday in San Francisco.
Two major updates include the rollout of Stablecoin Financial Accounts, which will allow businesses in 101 countries to hold balances in dollar-backed stablecoins, receive funds via crypto or traditional rails, and send stablecoins globally.
It also rolled out a new Payments Foundation Model, an AI system trained on tens of billions of...
DeFi Development Corp., a publicly traded real estate software firm turned crypto holding vehicle, said Wednesday it will execute a 7-for-1 stock split later this month, capping a frenetic pivot into the Solana blockchain ecosystem that has fueled a staggering rally in its share price.
The split, approved by the board and pending regulatory steps, will take effect May 20.
Shareholders of record as of May 19 will receive six additional shares for each share they hold, increasing outstanding shar...
Visa announced another crypto venture this week, revealing an investment in stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK.
London-based BVNK announced the “strategic investment” from Visa via the payment giant’s Visa Ventures arm. It did not reveal the size of the investment, but said it came following the firm’s $50 million Series B round in December.
BVNK says it’s building a “real time, 24-7, 365 payments network” for businesses using blockchains.
Only last week, Visa announced that it was partne...