FTX Will Give Away Bitcoin During the Super Bowl—But There’s a Catch

FTX, a leading cryptocurrency exchange, said it's giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin through a tie-in with its Super Bowl commercial.

Four contest winners, according to a series of teaser trailers posted Monday, will receive a number of coins based on exactly when the ad appears in the Eastern time zone—so if FTX's commercial airs at 9:02 ET, the exchange will give away 9.02 Bitcoins.

Anyone who follows the company’s Twitter account and retweets its pinned tweet after the ad airs is eligible to win.

The game, between the Bengals and Rams, is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET. FTX's spot is slated to appear during the second half, so with Bitcoin’s price surging over the weekend and into Monday, each winner would pocket nearly $90,000 if the ad appears at, say, 8 p.m., and the four winners would each receive eight coins each worth about $44,000 as of this writing.

FTX isn’t the only crypto company involved in the big game. After the exchange bought its ad in October, Crypto.com followed suit in December, purchasing 30 seconds of airtime for $6.5 million. And even non-crypto companies are getting in on the act, with a Bud Light commercial set to include imagery from the Nouns Ethereum NFT project.

Crypto exchanges are continuing to ramp up their profiles among sports fans. Last year, FTX agreed agreed to pay $135 million to sponsor the home of the Miami Heat, formerly American Airlines Arena, and on Christmas Day 2021 the former Staples Center in Los Angeles—home of the NBA's Lakers and Clippers, the WBNA's Sparks, and the NHL's Kings—became Crypto.com Arena after the exchange agreed to pay $700 million.

(An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the four winners would split the Bitcoins awarded; it has been updated to reflect that the winners will each receive a full allotment)