Skip to main content

Cryptocurrency shirt deal for Liverpool?

Liverpool are in talks over a new shirt sponsorship deal as their £40 million-a-year contract with Standard Chartered is set to expire in May 2023. And although discussions are continuing about extending their partnership, the club are also talking to firms from sectors including electronics, media and tourism.

Among those parties, The Athletic has revealed, are companies from the cryptocurrency sector. They include a crypto exchange firm — a platform to buy and sell digital currency — and a blockchain platform (a decentralised computer network that underpins cryptocurrencies).

Many English top-flight sides have signed deals with cryptocurrency firms over the past few years but displaying such companies on the front of their shirts would be a Premier League first. It is likely to be controversial but Liverpool are desperate to financially compete with other elite clubs and maximise their commercial deals.

There are a lot of environmental concerns about blockchains, which require vast computing power to operate, and the sector is largely unregulated and is closely associated with financial speculation. Cryptocurrency can be bought and sold on exchanges for financial gains or losses, potentially exposing fans to risk. 

This is, as yet,  a highly unregulated sector and one that poses risks even for relatively sophisticated investors.

The most prominent Premier League cryptocurrency sponsor is Socios, which sells “fan engagement tokens” and has deals with six clubs: Arsenal, Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Everton, Leeds United and Manchester City. Fans of Palace recently held up a banner calling the firm “parasites” but Socios insists it exists for the benefit of fans rather than as a means of currency speculation.

When Liverpool launched a series of NFTs — non-fungible tokens — last month, the backlash was marked.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance.  Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected.  “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”  He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more