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Good luck escaping crypto on February 13 when you're watching Super Bowl 56.
Crypto.com has bought a Super Bowl ad, the company told The Wall Street Journal today. The cost of an ad in this year's game is reportedly $6.5 million for 30 seconds.
It's just the latest move in the exchange's sports sponsorship push. Last month, Crypto.com paid a reported $700 million for the naming rights to the Staples Center, home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers. Earlier this year, the exchange also became a sponsor for Italy’s most prestigious soccer cup tournament final, the Coppa Italia final. As part of the agreement, an NFT collection was created to mark the occasion.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek told the WSJ that the company’s top brass want the exchange to become one of the world’s top 20 consumer brands in the next three to five years—placing it in the company of sports and tech giants like Nike and Apple. “Going into different sports just allows me to reach everybody where they are," Marszalek said. "Super Bowl is just one more step into that, where it’s as mass as you get."
The crypto industry’s sports push
Marszalek's goal of becoming a top consumer brand sounds a lot like what FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (Decrypt's Founder of the Year) said about his company's own sports deal push. "We are really coming from behind on name recognition,” Bankman-Fried said in November at a Decrypt and Yahoo Finance live event. “When someone’s looking to get involved in crypto for the first time, we’ve found that they haven’t heard of FTX.”
FTX has been spending to change that, and bought a Super Bowl ad of its own in October.
In April, FTX landed a huge deal with the NBA’s Miami Heat, becoming the franchise’s “official and exclusive” crypto partner. The deal saw the Heat’s home stadium—known for the last 22 years as the American Airlines Arena—become the FTX Arena. FTX US also recently landed deals with the Golden State Warriors, the Washington Wizards and Capitals, and even MLB umpires sport the crypto exchange’s logo on their uniforms.
Elsewhere in the NBA, Coinbase has etched out some territory for itself. In October, the newly public exchange inked a sponsorship deal that saw it become the NBA’s and WNBA’s official cryptocurrency partner. Just this month, Coinbase also landed a deal with NBA star and Brooklyn Net Kevin Durant.
Surely Crypto.com and FTX won't be the only crypto ads during Super Bowl 56. Will Coinbase be next to buy a spot?