The worlds of sports and crypto are now only separated by a very thin, blurry line. Both arenas are finding more ways to become connected, with the most recent example coming in the form of the Alabama women’s softball team and its new partnership with popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
FTX Is Blurring the Line Between Sports and Crypto
The trading platform has recently announced a new NIL offer that was made to the team. This is the second partnership of this kind to be made between FTX and women’s sports, with the first happening early in December between the exchange and the UCLA women’s basketball team.
Nate Clancy – the FTX vice president of business development – explained in a statement:
We like to partner with full teams because so much of crypto is about community development, and we hope that NIL partners learn and explore crypto and FTX with their friends and teammates in an authentic way. FSU softball specifically was a great fit for FTX. When we looked at the culture they’ve built and the FSU standard of excellence, it became clear that they were the right partners.
2021 saw many sports and crypto ventures becoming one and the same. The most common example involves the number of professional athletes that are now looking to accept crypto as a means of payment for their work. This was a trend that was arguably started by Russell Okung, a former player on the football team the Carolina Panthers. Receiving an annual salary of more than $13 million, Okung shocked the world when he stated that he would be converting approximately half of that to bitcoin.
He stated:
Money is more than currency; it’s power. The way money is handled from creation to dissemination is part of that power. Getting paid in bitcoin is the first step of opting out of the corrupt, manipulated economy we all inhabit. Bitcoin fans are not only disrupting the status quo; we are reclaiming power that is rightly ours. PAY MEIN BITCOIN today becomes a reality thanks to Strike and the Panthers front office. This is the acknowledgement of a new way, a new path and a new future that recognizes diversity in finance and a reclamation of true financial control.
Clancy says that this is likely the first deal of its kind to occur for a softball team, though there have been deals offered to women’s teams at both FAU and BYU in the past. It is also the first time a deal like this has ever occurred in crypto. All players who take part in the deal will receive payments for promoting FTX on social media and engaging with fans and customers.
The Super Bowl Would’ve Been the Prime Target
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried explained:
We actually wanted to buy the Super Bowl itself, but they don’t yet accept cryptocurrency, so we’re settling for ad time.
