Global online investment platform eToro, which notably offers cryptocurrency trading, has inked partnerships with seven major Premier League football clubs – all paid for in bitcoin.
Major clubs playing in the world’s most-televised football league – watched by billions – could soon be using bitcoin to buy players from the global transfer market after opening digital crypto wallets with online trading platform eToro.
Founded in Tel Aviv in 2006, the Israel-based platform has quickly gained a presence as a social trading network and investment platform globally and has will now gain major marketing exposure in the Premier League (PL), England’s first division of football.
Paying for its sponsorship deals in bitcoin, eToro has entered partnerships with seven Premier League football clubs. They are Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United, 2015-16 champions Leicester City, Crystal Palace, Southampton, Cardiff City and Brighton & Hove Albion, all of whom who have also agreed to open digital wallets with eToro, according to the Telegraph.
eToro UK managing director Iqbal V. Gandham stated:
“We’ve done a sponsorship deal, but rather than pay them in traditional pound notes we’ve paid them in bitcoin…. What they choose to do with that is entirely up to them.”
The eToro brand will be plastered across a number of marketing tie-ins including pitch-side (television-saavy) LED advertising boards, player access, tunnel areas, tickets and other digital rights.
Gandham hinted at an immediate use-case for cryptocurrencies in the multi-billion pound transfer market which sees Premier League clubs sign players from all over the world in transactions that would be faster, cheaper, more transparent and better facilitated with cryptocurrency than fiat pounds.
Fran Jones, head of partnerships at Tottenham, arguably the biggest of the seven newly-partnered clubs, stressed the club is “committed to technology and innovation” while Southampton’s commercial director David Thomas said the club is keen on “learning more about the potential that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology can have in football.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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