Bitcoin College Bowl Game (BitPay)

[j3steven]

I guess the rumors are true.....BitPay is sponsoring a bowl game:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bitpay-to-sponsor-st-petersburg-bowl-in-first-major-bitcoin-sports-deal-1403098202

[RixDollar]

This is VERY cool! 

[Alley]

I think its safe to say by the end of the year everybody will at least know what bitcoin is.  We will now start seeing some bitcoin company commercials.

[keithers]

This was a great idea, as a matter of fact, I believe I said that BTC users should sponsor a bowl game in one of the threads here that was discussing different things that we could sponsor to get more adoption/recognition

[cech4204a]

Yeah, we need more of that ! I can't wait for it to start! Did anyone mention that there is a chance that some colleges in USA will start accepting BTC as payment for tuition?

[desticy]

Others support bitpay, bitpay take out part of the support to support another

[ljudotina]

Good PR for BitPay and for BTC as a whole. We need so much more of this....but not too much...i need to buy some more BTC before price goes up 

[Este Nuno]

How big is this bowl game relative to other college bowl games?

I don't know too much about college football. But I know the bigger bowl games like the BCS Championship, Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl ect...

[j3steven]

How big is this bowl game relative to other college bowl games?

I don't know too much about college football. But I know the bigger bowl games like the BCS Championship, Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl ect...

Its not one of the "bigger games" that is played on New Years Day or afterwards, which are typically meant for the better teams/bigger markets/better ratings.  This bowl game is typically played by either a couple Conference USA teams or one C-USA teams & a MAC team.  Both smaller conferences in relation to like the SEC or BIG10.

However its the only game being played that day, December 26, so it'll still draw a crowd & viewers. 

BitPay is going to call it Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.  Originally it was just the St. Petersburg Bowl, then Beef O Brady's bought the naming rights and named it the Beef O' Brady's Bowl, and now its the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.

Pretty sure they have a 4 year agreement too, so it'll be around for a handful of years!

[allthingsluxury]

Very nice, that is awesome.

[Este Nuno]

How big is this bowl game relative to other college bowl games?

I don't know too much about college football. But I know the bigger bowl games like the BCS Championship, Rose Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl ect...

Its not one of the "bigger games" that is played on New Years Day or afterwards, which are typically meant for the better teams/bigger markets/better ratings.  This bowl game is typically played by either a couple Conference USA teams or one C-USA teams & a MAC team.  Both smaller conferences in relation to like the SEC or BIG10.

However its the only game being played that day, December 26, so it'll still draw a crowd & viewers. 

BitPay is going to call it Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.  Originally it was just the St. Petersburg Bowl, then Beef O Brady's bought the naming rights and named it the Beef O' Brady's Bowl, and now its the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.

Pretty sure they have a 4 year agreement too, so it'll be around for a handful of years!

Thanks for the answer.

That is actually pretty good having it all alone on Boxing Day.

They could have just gone all the way and called it the Bitcoin Bowl. That rolls off the tongue nicely. But I respect the fact that they wanted to give the bowl back it's real name as well.

[JypsiCreme]

Cool of them to call ik the Bitcoin bowl and not just BitPay bowl.

[Stery]

Bitcoin College Bowl thats really cool

[tigeRshoes]

Cool of them to call ik the Bitcoin bowl and not just BitPay bowl.

They didn't even integrate their logo. It's bitcoin top and bottom. A real class act, BitPay.

[mamarried]

Cool of them to call ik the Bitcoin bowl and not just BitPay bowl.

They didn't even integrate their logo. It's bitcoin top and bottom. A real class act, BitPay.

Yeah that's pretty cool. A few months ago they explicitly said they'd re-brand and identify themselves more with bitcoin and less with 'bitpay'. After all, we're trying to build an ecosystem here, not grab a bit of marketshare from an incumbent ecosystem. At first they did this by developing Bitcore, an open-source platform on NodeJS for bitcoin, as well as funding Jeff Garzik, the bitcoin core developer. And now they're doing things like this, I think that's great.

[mamarried]

Cool of them to call ik the Bitcoin bowl and not just BitPay bowl.

They didn't even integrate their logo. It's bitcoin top and bottom. A real class act, BitPay.

Of course let's not forget, it's very important for them right now to create user adoption. And you can't do that by branding something 'Bitpay' when 0 of Bitpay's customers are exclusively bitcoin users, Bitpay is a merchant company 100%. But they make money on purchases, and no merchant is willing to pay Bitpay a monthly fee if they don't get any bitcoin sales. So at this point it makes a lot of sense to get people involved in bitcoin. Merchant adoption is far outpacing consumer adoption at this point.

[FlowerMatt]

Cool of them to call ik the Bitcoin bowl and not just BitPay bowl.

They didn't even integrate their logo. It's bitcoin top and bottom. A real class act, BitPay.

Yeah that's pretty cool. A few months ago they explicitly said they'd re-brand and identify themselves more with bitcoin and less with 'bitpay'. After all, we're trying to build an ecosystem here, not grab a bit of marketshare from an incumbent ecosystem. At first they did this by developing Bitcore, an open-source platform on NodeJS for bitcoin, as well as funding Jeff Garzik, the bitcoin core developer. And now they're doing things like this, I think that's great.

Of course let's not forget, it's very important for them right now to create user adoption. And you can't do that by branding something 'Bitpay' when 0 of Bitpay's customers are exclusively bitcoin users, Bitpay is a merchant company 100%. But they make money on purchases, and no merchant is willing to pay Bitpay a monthly fee if they don't get any bitcoin sales. So at this point it makes a lot of sense to get people involved in bitcoin. Merchant adoption is far outpacing consumer adoption at this point.

In other words they are purposely blurring the line between bitcoin the protocol and their own private company for selfish gain.
This sort of "rebranding" really has the affect of confusing new people, who will think bitpay is "the bitcoin company." That is the goal.
Why on earth would you name something "bitcore," when the main open source product itself is called "bitcoin core," if your goal was not confusion? It doesn't even mirror what the original does.
Same with their new logo, which is the exact same font as "bitcoin", with a few letters swapped out.
These changes aren't noble, they're wrong.

[Nerazzura]

I guess the rumors are true.....BitPay is sponsoring a bowl game:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bitpay-to-sponsor-st-petersburg-bowl-in-first-major-bitcoin-sports-deal-1403098202

I guess the rumors are true.....BitPay is sponsoring a bowl game:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bitpay-to-sponsor-st-petersburg-bowl-in-first-major-bitcoin-sports-deal-1403098202

BitPay works with approximately 30,000 businesses including Tiger Direct, Virgin Galactic and WordPress to help them accept bitcoin payments. Startup plans to use the latest round of funding to hire another 70 staff over the next year and focus on establishing a presence in North America, South America and Europe.
After bitcoin was created in 2009, some early adopters trying to bootstrap virtual currency companies with mixed results. Because bitcoin prices began to skyrocket and get more media attention, a new crop of startups entering the space and attract big name VC.

[rext]

yeap gogo bitcoin

[LouReed]

I think its safe to say by the end of the year everybody will at least know what bitcoin is.  We will now start seeing some bitcoin company commercials.

Yep, I'm guessing come fall, we'll be seeing Dish Network commercials with Bitcoin in them. Hopefully they'll get creative with it too!