The professional British soccer team – Manchester United – inked a $27 million deal with the blockchain platform Tezos. As a result, the club will put the latter’s logo on its training apparel.
The most successful English soccer club ended its previous $163 million collaboration with the American insurance company Aon at the end of last season. Since then, the team has been seeking another training kit sponsor.
According to The Athletic, the decentralized open-source blockchain protocol – Tezos – stepped in as one. Manchester United will pay $27 million per year to have the project’s logo on its training apparel.
The soccer giant, known among fans as “The Red Devils,” has already started promoting the sponsorship on its club’s center. However, the Carrington ground, home to the team’s youth academy, will not embody Tezos’s initials.
Last summer, the club’s legend Cristiano Ronaldo re-signed with “The Red Devils” after spending many years of his career at Juventus and Real Madrid. According to many, the Portuguese superstar is a driving factor in striking commercial deals like the one with Tezos.
The blockchain entity has interacted with the sports industry before as well. Last October, it collaborated with the British F1 team – McLaren Racing – to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) platform where fans could purchase digital collectibles related to their favorite Formula 1 squad.
An update from both sides shared with CryptoPotato from February 10 reads that the training kit will be first worn ahead of this weekend’s game against Southampton.
Earlier this year, another soccer giant – FC Barcelona – revealed it could enter the cryptocurrency universe by striking a partnership with the blockchain protocol Polkadot. If the two parties shake hands, the digital asset platform will become an official jersey sponsor of the team.
FC Barcelona described the latter as a protocol that allows a “high number of transactions per second.” In fact, it can perform 1,000 TPS, and once it becomes fully operational, it could increase to 1,000,000.
Apart from Polkadot, the other option for a sponsor is the digital music streaming service Spotify. The Spanish club informed it would thoroughly examine the alternatives and choose the one corresponding to its long-term goals.
FC Barcelona’s current sponsorship with Rakuten is due in July this year, meaning that Polkadot or Spotify will step in as the new sponsor after that date.