Crypto.com to Sponsor Latin America’s Leading Soccer Competition
The company will serve as an official partner of the CONMEMBOL Copa Libertadores Cup starting in 2023. It plans to develop competition-related NFTs.
Nov 26, 2021 at 6:14 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/Z4RK2TXQ5NEZPMOB2RX2ZDY54M.jpg)
(Matthew Ashton/AMA/Getty Images)
After renaming the Staples Arena in a $700 million deal this month, Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com will become an official partner of CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores, the highest level of club soccer team competition in South America.
Through an agreement with CONMEBOL, the governing body for soccer in South America, Crypto.com will serve as an official partner of CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores from 2023 to 2026 and as a licensee of the competition’s official non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as of 2022, the company said in a statement Thursday, without disclosing further terms.
The deal will make Crypto.com the latest participant in Latin American soccer’s NFT trend, which includes stars such as Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Pelé. In July, CONMEBOL teamed up with Ethernity Chain to mine the 47th Copa America trophy – a continental soccer tournament – as an NFT.
As part of the agreement with CONMEBOL, Crypto.com will be the first brand to be integrated into the Virtual Assistant Referee (VAR) system through which referees review plays, the company added.
“Additionally, Crypto.com will benefit from brand exposure in stadiums, activations and broadcasts of the Conmebol Libertadores, as well as digital assets”, the crypto exchange said, adding that both parties will create NFTs associated with the CONMEBOL Copa Libertadores competition on the NFT platform of Crypto.com.
“Our research shows Latin America is leading the way in embracing cryptocurrency, with 40% of Latin Americans saying they are interested in buying crypto in the near future. Naturally we were eager to support the continent’s most important football competition,” Kris Marszalek, co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com, said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Crypto.com acquired the naming rights to the Staples Center, home to the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association, in a 20-year deal.
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Andrés Engler was a CoinDesk editor based in Argentina, where he covers the Latin American crypto ecosystem. He holds BTC and ETH.
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