Oxford City Football Club to accept Bitcoin for matchday tickets

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Unit­ed King­dom Bit­coin (BTC) pay­ments adop­tion just recruit­ed a new play­er. Oxford City Foot­ball Club looks to become the first Nation­al League foot­ball club to accept match­day pay­ments in BTC when the sea­son kicks off on Aug. 6.

Fans will be able to pur­chase tick­ets, food and drink at Oxford City’s RAW Charg­ing Sta­di­um with Bit­coin over the Light­ning Net­work. Lega­cy pay­ment meth­ods such as cash and card are still accepted.

Oxford City Foot­ball Club (OCFC) cur­rent­ly plays in the sixth tier of Eng­lish foot­ball, the Nation­al League South. The club struck a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship with Coin­Corner, an Isle of Man-based Bit­coin com­pa­ny. Coin­Corner will be a back-of-shirt spon­sor for the club and released a lim­it­ed edi­tion Oxford City FC Bolt Card to mark the occasion.

The Bit­coin logo on the back of the OCFC shirt. Source: CoinCorner

The Hoops, as they are known local­ly, will sport a BTC logo on the back of the match­day shirts as part of the part­ner­ship between Coin­Corner and the team. Coin­Corner is also the offi­cial match spon­sor for Oxford City FC’s (OCFC) open­ing game on Aug. 6.

On the same day, Peter McCormack’s pro-Bit­coin foot­ball club, Real Bed­ford, will accept Bit­coin for match­day tick­ets. How­ev­er, the Bed­ford team plays in a low­er, local league, the Spar­tan South Mid­lands League.

Coin­Corner CEO Dan­ny Scott explained that OCFC is the “first adopter of Bit­coin pay­ments in the Nation­al League.” Scott continued: 

“We believe this move will set a trend across Non-league and Foot­ball League divi­sions as dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy estab­lish­es itself as the new nor­mal for sports fans and event-goers across the U.K.”

Bit­coin advo­cate and Founder of OxBit, the Oxford Bit­coin meet­up, Coach Car­bon explained to Coin­tele­graph how the deal came about. In Decem­ber 2022, OCFC host­ed the Bit­coin Ballers Win­ter Cup festival–a Bit­coin-cen­tric foot­balling day out. 

Relat­ed: Hon­duras attracts cryp­to investor tourists with Bit­coin Valley

OxBit has since host­ed var­i­ous mee­tups at the club grounds and Car­bon con­tin­ues to advo­cate for Bit­coin adop­tion around the city. Car­bon man­aged a rela­tion­ship with the foot­ball club’s new com­mer­cial  direc­tor and shared “numer­ous infor­mal dis­cus­sions about engag­ing and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty through events & education.” 

“A three-way call was arranged and things pro­gressed from there once the foot­ball club under­stood and could see the impact Coin­Corner could make with regards to Bit­coin edu­ca­tion and adoption.”

At the club, Justin Mer­ritt, Direc­tor of Foot­ball at Oxford City FC, explained: “More than 3.3 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in the U.K. now own Bit­coin – an increase of approx­i­mate­ly one mil­lion peo­ple in the last year alone.” 

Coin­tele­graph report­ed in June 2021 that, per an FCA report, up to 2.3 mil­lion Brits own BTC, while a Coin­base report stretched that fig­ure to as much as one-third of Brits are cryp­to-curi­ous. Mer­ritt continued:

“It’s not manda­to­ry for peo­ple to engage with our new tech­nol­o­gy, but we believe in time, pay­ing via Bit­coin will become the new nor­mal in Eng­lish football.”

Across the Unit­ed King­dom, grass­roots Bit­coin adop­tion is grow­ing, while Edin­burgh looks for­ward to host­ing a Bit­coin con­fer­ence in Octo­ber this year.

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