[2018-08-21] UK Football Clubs Set Up Bitcoin Wallets in Etoro Partnership

[hlekker]

Seven UK Premier League football clubs have agreed to be paid in bitcoin as part of a sports sponsorship deal with online trading platform eToro.

In a press release early this morning, eToro will pay for the sponsorship rights with the football clubs in bitcoin, thus requiring the teams to setup bitcoin wallets to receive the funds. The amount of bitcoin to be paid to the clubs for the sponsorship was not disclosed.

https://grizzle.com/bitcoin-sports-sponsorship-etoro/

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[gentlemand]

Hope it lasts longer than the Bitcoin Bowl sponsorship thing with Bitpay.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2018/08/20/premier-league-clubs-trial-cryptocurrency-experts-predict-bitcoins/

That reckons they're forecasting using it in the transfer arena eventually.

[Samarkand]

...
That reckons they're forecasting using it in the transfer arena eventually.

I think the BTC market needs to mature until something like this is possible.

Let´s imagine that Chelsea is buying a player for the BTC equivalent of 60M GBP.
They wouldn´t even be able to acquire 60M in BTC without huge losses due to slippage.
If they would make an OTC deal, they can also expect to get a rate that is worse than the
spot price.

Additionally, UK banks are not particularly fond of cryptocurrencies and I assume
that most Premier League clubs also use English banks. This might change in the future,
but right now I regard this as a pipe dream.

[stompix]

From the Telegraph article:

He said the seven clubs involved in the trial have all been paid to receive bitcoin in a bid to spark interest. "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."

Hope it's not another flop where they've paid them x BTC in an account and they've converted all the coins to pounds and withdraw all the fiat.

I wonder how much Etoro paid them on top of the normal deal to do this.

[gentlemand]

I think the BTC market needs to mature until something like this is possible.

Let´s imagine that Chelsea is buying a player for the BTC equivalent of 60M GBP.
They wouldn´t even be able to acquire 60M in BTC without huge losses due to slippage.
If they would make an OTC deal, they can also expect to get a rate that is worse than the
spot price.

Additionally, UK banks are not particularly fond of cryptocurrencies and I assume
that most Premier League clubs also use English banks. This might change in the future,
but right now I regard this as a pipe dream.

The whole thing sounds rather silly and doomed to me but you can't get much more high profile than clubs of that level.

You're right though. They'll be up to their tits in conventional finance and investors. I presume they'll slowly shelve the idea, not that they were actually all that interested in the first place. I presume they were being polite to get that money out of Etoro.