An English Premier League, Top Tier Football club called SouthamptonFC based in Southampton, Hampshire has signed (extended) a three-year deal with the Coingaming Group under which brand Sportsbet.io remains to be the 'jersey' sponsor. This will enable the club administration to give out bonuses in Bitcoin. All 24 players inside the club are eligible for these 'performance-based' bonus payments.
Let’s put into perspective how bullish this can be for Bitcoin: The Saints’ star striker Danny Ings’ salary makes him about $5.35 million (£3.9 million) per year. If he’s paid a 5 percent bonus, for instance, that would net him about $268,000 (£195,000) in bitcoin.
Source: www.nasdaq.com
When this happens, a decent amount of Bitcoins will be taken out from the market and hopefully, these players will HODL them strong. Saints’ Chief Commercial Officer – David Thomas & CEO of the Coingaming Group Maarja Pärt are quite happy with the collaboration and in their official press releases, both of them mentioned how this partnership has been fruitful to both the parties. This is also the biggest sponsorship deal done by the club in its lifetime.
(The BTC bonus) allows the club the opportunity to take advantage of the new, high-growth currency if it feels it will bring significant future benefits.
Source: news.bitcoin.com
Last year, Watford F.C. had a Bitcoin logo on their jersey and accepted payments in Bitcoin for the purchase of their merchandise. Premier League clubs have shown interest in this space as an alternative source of revenue and a cool investment source for the players. Pro athletes all over the world are investing in Bitcoin as they understand its worth.
NFL & NBA are also two other sports that are heavily invested in Bitcoin. Sacramento Kings became the first NBA franchise to accept payment in bitcoin in 2014. In 2020, they announced that the players would be eligible to receive salaries in bitcoin. In 2019, Dallas Mavericks used bitcoin to sell their tickets and merchandise who are now thinking to sell 'high-rated' match tickets as NFTs to keep getting royalties. Miami Dolphins, started accepting bitcoin payments during the 2019-20 NFL season.
Sports For Adoption
The sports industry is huge. It is expected to continue to grow & reach a value of $614.1 billion by 2022. Digital betting & gambling has seen explosive growth in the past few years. Fan-based revenue is the biggest source of income for any sport, hence the power of influence of sports celebrities & brands is quite high. Crypto/Blockchain can easily fit here and solve many problems. At the same time, it can be a reliable investment asset.
Looking at bitcoin's massive success during the past few months, all major sports athletes and clubs are putting their money into it and more projects related to various cryptocurrencies. NFTs are used by teams for the trading of Digital cards and collectibles associated with them. There are numerous crypto use cases that can hugely benefit various sports and their fans. Even though the value of crypto assets is volatile, we can expect a huge adoption wave in the industry in the upcoming years!
