When we look at a Serie A shirt today, it’s difficult to remember what football was like before. Away with the writings of bookmakers and online casinos, into a new fauna of logos: newborn exchanges, exotic trading platforms, crypto projects with a hyper-technological name. In this transition from betting to cryptocurrencies, at least seven Serie A clubs they now have agreements with eleven sponsors related to trading and cryptocurrencies, often not even authorized in Europe.
It’s not just a question of patches on the shirt. In a few years the Serie A has grossed something like 180 million euros in crypto sponsorshipswhich reach approx 250 million if we include fan tokens and various partnerships: more than double what came from the world of betting before 2019.
It is an economic leap in scale, but above all a symbolic one: football becomes a showcase for a finance still unstable, often opaque and hungry for mass onboarding, seeking popular legitimacy. The most visible front are the fan tokens. Wired he described them as “utility tokens”: digital tokens that promise fans discounts, voting rights on the shirts, on the team bus or on the song after the goal, exclusive experiences and so on.
The technology is that of Socios.com and the Chiliz ecosystemwhich today works with over 90 clubs and sports organizations, from Juventus to Inter, from Milan to Roma, up to the national team. It works like this: the club launches its token, lo sells to fans in a sort of gamified IPO and cashes in immediately. Then the token floats on the market, often with capitalizations in the tens of millions of dollars (PSG, Manchester City, Atlético Madrid are at the top of the table) as long as the interest holds. Meanwhile, other partnerships are arriving, from the NFTs of the Italian Cup with Crypto.com to the sponsorship of the Serie A VAR, also with a crypto brand.
A monetary analysis
All very innovative. But if we use the old lens of monetary economics, something doesn’t add up. In class, when we explain what the money, we rely on three functions: medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value. For now, crypto in football doesn’t really fit any of the three.
Come medium of exchange, cryptocurrencies remain marginal. There are some experiments: bonuses paid in bitcoin, footballers purchased with crypto, minor clubs that transform the treasury into wallets. But tickets, season tickets, TV rights, salaries: everything continues to travel in euros, pounds, dollars. Crypto is more of a branding gadget than the daily fuel of sport.
As a unit of account, we are even further apart. Balance sheets are written in fiat currency, not fan tokens. No CDA discusses whether financial fair play is sustainable in “$JUV” or “$LAZ” instead of euros. Digital tokens serve to classify engagement, not measure economic value.
