English Premier League to Investigate Clubs for Crypto Partnerships

The foremost football league in the world, English Premier League, has announced that it’ll be investigating the links between its clubs and crypto firms as suspicions keep growing regarding the products being offered by these companies and the lack of regulations in the crypto industry. 

Premiership to pay attention to crypto partnerships 

The issue came to the forefront after the defending champions, Manchester City, had to suspend a deal with a cryptocurrency firm after it discovered that none of the executives whose names were in the press release had an online presence. 

Several sports teams, leagues, and players have embraced partnerships with crypto companies as they offer another source of revenue for the cash-strapped sports clubs. For example, this year alone, several football clubs like S.S.C. Napoli, PSV Eindhoven, and Watford FC have dealt with crypto-related firms and tokens.

While these partnerships are great, the volatility of cryptocurrencies and the lack of regulations in the industry pose a risk to young football fans who have little investment experience and can take substantial financial risks that might backfire. 

Furthermore, with the large percentage of failed ICOs, football clubs endorsing unverified ICOs put fans who invest in such coins at risk. Coupled with this are fans groups’ concerns about the high trading fees and children being influenced to use these crypto platforms. Thus, there’s a need to vet the process to prevent football clubs from endorsing crypto products that might harm the fans. 

Premier league eyes NFT deal

The Premier League disclosed that it’s also considering partnering with a digital collectibles platform to provide non-fungible tokens player cards and other products for the league. 

If it goes ahead with the partnership, it’ll join the likes of the Spanish La Liga and German Bundesliga, who have already signed similar licensing deals with football-focused NFT platform, Sorare.

This corroborates a Financial Times report released earlier in the year which stated that the officials of the league were looking into how the football league could tap into this burgeoning crypto space as a way of cushioning the effect of the pandemic.