eToro has announced an advertising partnership with seven Premier League Football clubs. The deal was settled with Bitcoin and represents one of the largest blending of cryptocurrencies and sports to date. It comes immediately after CoinDeal signed a partnership with the Wolverhampton Wanderers to put their logo on the Wolves’ sleeves.[1][2]
In addition, the Sacramento Kings have continued their crypto exploration by announcing that they are mining Ethereum[3] in their arena’s basement and the Mavs expressed interest in accepting Bitcoin as a payment method.
As great at 2018 has been for the blending of Cryptocurrencies and sports, 2014 was an even bigger year. Much like 2018, 2014 was a bear year that immediately proceeded what was at the time Bitcoin’s biggest bull market in its history. That led to a lot of people and companies with a bunch of cash that was rapidly disappearing. Advertising is a great way to bring in new people and so we saw a rush of cryptocurrency advertising in sports, unlike anything we had seen before. How successful were they? Let’s take a look.
The Jamaican Bobsleigh Team and Dogecoin
Photo: M. Smelter via Wikimedia Commons
Likely the first blending of sports and crypto was one that would have brought warmth to John Candy’s heart. After raising $30,000 in Dogecoin, the Jamaican Bobsleigh team was able to afford the trip to the Sochi Olympics. While it lacked the later overt advertising of our next example, it did provide immense goodwill for the then-new cryptocurrency and built up legitimacy and goodwill for it. It also had a surprising affect on the price, with Dogecoin raising 50% against bitcoin in the waning days of the bull market of late 2013/early 2014.
It was undoubtedly a huge success as Dogecoin
