[Thread] A look at the English Premier League soccer clubs' crypto sponsorships and fan tokens, most of which have tanked in value, exposing fans to big losses
The thread lands at the midpoint of an arc that began when 17 of 20 Premier League clubs signed commercial deals with cryptocurrency companies, and fans went on to spend £262M+ on crypto-based fan tokens, mostly through Socios. By spring 2022 those tokens were already disappointing buyers, with prices losing steam within days of launch.
What D'Urso adds is the ledger: most of those tokens have since tanked, leaving fans holding the losses. The related coverage also shows the counter-current — after FTX's collapse forced sport to rethink crypto money, crypto firms still spent a record near-£130M on 2024/25 Premier League sponsorship, partly because they sit outside tighter gambling rules.
First-order effects
Fans who bought Socios-issued tokens are sitting on large losses, and the clubs that marketed the tokens now carry the reputational cost of products their supporters feel exploited by.
Clubs' sponsorship income is exposed on both sides: the token side is impaired by the price collapse and by reporting that Socios withheld crypto payments to staff to prop up its chiliZ currency.
Second-order effects
As crypto sponsors replaced gambling partners in club shirt and stadium deals, critics and regulators have a ready-made template — gambling-style restrictions — to apply to fan tokens and crypto branding, pressuring clubs to vet these partners like betting firms.
Rival revenue streams are affected too: if fan tokens keep underperforming, clubs leaning on them for 'engagement' income must lean harder on traditional sponsors, intensifying competition for non-crypto commercial deals.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, sports sponsorship keeps rotating toward lightly regulated financial products ahead of the rules catching up — crypto today occupying the slot gambling occupied before tighter oversight, with fans as the retail exposure point each time.
Sustained losses on fan tokens could force a structural split between club fundraising and fan financial products, pushing leagues toward regulation or standardized disclosure rather than club-by-club token launches.
The trend: Sports sponsorship is cycling from gambling to crypto faster than regulation follows, leaving fans as the retail holders of risk each time.
More brilliant work from @josephmdurso on football and Cryptocurrency, and the crash in value of fan tokens. As these graphs (from clubs taken at random - there wasn't a Spurs one) demonstrate. https://theathletic.com/... https://twitter.com/...
🏙️ MAN CITY Lots! Crypto exchange OKX all over the billboards for the title win: https://theathletic.com/... And again Socios, hugely down from higher highs than other clubs: https://twitter.com/...
🔴⚪️ ARSENAL Arsenal's Socios fan token, for which the Advertising Standards Authority said the club “trivialised investment in cryptoassets and took advantage of consumers' inexperience or credulity”. My first big Socios investigation here: https://theathletic.com/... https://twi…
🔴👿 MAN UNITED Training kit sponsored by Tezos blockchain. Here's what's happened to the Tezos token since the deal was reached in Feb. https://twitter.com/...
Great thread from Joey giving a snapshot of what football clubs are up to with their dubious crypto schemes. He's done fantastic reporting on this murky landscape https://twitter.com/...
Outstanding, detailed reporting. Individually, the picture is of careless, shortsighted commercial decision-making. But collectively, it's of a sport that has abandoned any sense of responsibility to its customers and is completely incapable of self-regulation. https://twitter.co…
🔵 CHELSEA Have one of the biggest crypto sponsorship deals in world football with a mysterious app called WhaleFin. Chelsea coach John Terry also promoted an NFT scheme which has now lost 99% of its initiial price: https://theathletic.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Lots of replies along the lines of “stocks have fallen too” to which I'd say: - Are football clubs promoting investing in individual stocks that have plummeted? - What about stocks that have fallen 90%+? - With stocks, for better or worse, you own an actual thing
🔴 LIVERPOOL The club launched an NFT scheme which sold barely 6% of the amount it hoped to: https://theathletic.com/... They're now mostly trading at a loss: https://twitter.com/...