UFC and Crypto.com Announce New ‘Fight Night’ Bonuses in Bitcoin

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UFC, the world’s pre­mier mixed mar­tial arts orga­ni­za­tion and Crypto.com, announced the cre­ation of new Fight Night bonus­es for UFC ath­letes that will be paid in bit­coin (BTC).

The new Fan Bonus of the Night will fea­ture three bit­coin bonus­es that will be award­ed to the top three fight­ers on each UFC Pay-Per-View event, as decid­ed by fans vot­ing from all over the world, accord­ing to Thursday’s announce­ment.

How­ev­er, this doesn’t mean that the sports league will phase out cash bonus­es. Instead, it looks like the pre­mier mixed mar­tial arts orga­ni­za­tion is mak­ing more strate­gic moves in its fair­ly new part­ner­ship with Crypto.com.

With over 625 mil­lion fans, UFC signed a his­toric 10-year deal back in July 2021, val­ued at $175 mil­lion with Crypto.com, where­by the fastest grow­ing cryp­to plat­form announced an exclu­sive NFT line in Novem­ber of that same year. 

“Crypto.com has been an offi­cial UFC part­ner for less than a year, and I’m telling you they are already one of the best part­ners we’ve ever had,” said UFC Pres­i­dent Dana White. “They’re con­stant­ly com­ing up with new ideas about how we can work togeth­er to con­nect with the fans. This new Fan Bonus of the Night is an awe­some way to get fans more engaged in our events while reward­ing the fight­ers for bad-ass performances.” 

Steven Kali­fowitz, CMO of Crypto.com, also com­ment­ed on the recent announce­ment, stat­ing ‚”[c]entral to our part­ner­ship with UFC is cre­at­ing the most unique and com­pelling ways for fans to con­nect with the sport and their favorite athletes.”

Crypto sponsorships gain strong footing in sports

Over the past two years, sports spon­sor­ships have cer­tain­ly tak­en cen­ter stage in the fin­tech and cryp­tocur­ren­cy arenas. 

FIFA World Cup 2022

Specif­i­cal­ly, Crypto.com, which serves over 10 mil­lion cus­tomers, also secured an exclu­sive cryp­to spon­sor title for the FIFA World Cup 2022.

Crypto.com Arena

Back in Decem­ber 2021, Crypto.com secured an exclu­sive 20-year nam­ing rights deal with Los Ange­les’ Sta­ples Are­na, val­ued at $700 mil­lion, where­by Sta­ples Are­na would be renamed to what is now known as Crypto.com Are­na. The name change went into effect on Christ­mas day, as the Lak­ers played their home game for the first time under the new name change.

It is pre­dict­ed that sports spon­sor­ships through cryp­tocur­ren­cy will reach $5 bil­lion by 2026, accord­ing to Nielsen. Accord­ing to the firm’s research, the data indi­cates a 778% growth over the next four years com­pared to 2021.

Source: Nielsen

But, what is attract­ing cryp­to com­pa­nies towards sports sponsorships?

Back when cryp­to plat­form Voy­ager Dig­i­tal had struck a mul­ti-year deal with Nation­al Women’s Soc­cer League, the company’s CEO had an expla­na­tion for that.

“There is a lot of crossover between an inter­est in cryp­to and sports fans,” said Voy­ager CEO Steve Ehrlich. “I think that’s why more and more com­pa­nies are jump­ing into this are­na and doing some of these big­ger deals.”

Voy­ager has also secured spon­sor­ships with Mark Cuban-owned Dal­las Mav­er­icks, Tam­pa Bay Buc­ca­neer tight-end Rob Gronkows­ki, and NASCAR dri­ver Lan­don Cas­sil. We are now see­ing a vari­ety of cryp­to deals extend­ing to oth­er are­nas, includ­ing crick­et world cups, NFL Super Bowls, the NBA, and more. 

On Thurs­day, ESPN also dropped its first NFT col­lec­tion, fea­tur­ing for­mer Patri­ots play­er, Tom Brady, who cur­rent­ly plays for the Tam­pa Bay Buc­ca­neers. The NFT comes in the form of a dig­i­tal mag­a­zine, based on Brady’s “Man in the Are­na” series on ESPN+. 

Watchdogs on Alert

With the rise in cryp­to mar­ket­ing bud­get, glob­al reg­u­la­tors have also been tight­en­ing their grip to over­see their pro­mo­tions across the globe. 

India is now sub­ject­ed to the country’s newest adver­tis­ing guide­lines, where top cryp­to firms abstained from adver­tis­ing in this year’s Twenty20 Crick­et Indi­an Pre­mier League (IPL). Sim­i­lar­ly, the UK by and through its Adver­tis­ing Stan­dards Author­i­ty (ASA), has also begun issu­ing out enforce­ment notices over cryp­to ads. The watch­dog has also brought down sev­er­al pro­mo­tions and is keep­ing a close eye on how cryp­to is adver­tised in the country.

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