Blockchain infrastructure firm Chain will sponsor New England Patriots football team

Chain, a blockchain infra­struc­ture firm that offers devel­op­ers Web3 ser­vices to build and main­tain blockchain-based appli­ca­tions, will spon­sor the New Eng­land Patri­ots foot­ball team as well as oth­er venues and sport­ing clubs con­trolled by the Kraft Group.

In a Thurs­day announce­ment, Chain said it will be the offi­cial blockchain and Web3 spon­sor of the Patri­ots, the New Eng­land Rev­o­lu­tion soc­cer club, Gillette Sta­di­um in Mass­a­chu­setts and the shop­ping cen­ter Patri­ot Place as part of a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship deal with Kraft Sports + Enter­tain­ment, the mar­ket­ing and events divi­sion of the Kraft Group. Chain will work to devel­op Web3 expe­ri­ences for vis­i­tors to Gillette Sta­di­um and Patri­ot Place by “merg­ing the phys­i­cal with the digital.”

Speak­ing to Coin­tele­graph, a Chain spokesper­son declined to com­ment on the mon­e­tary details behind the part­ner­ship. They hint­ed that the Web3 fan expe­ri­ence was tied to the firm “recent­ly [sell­ing] out a his­toric NFT project with a glob­al lux­u­ry retailer.”

Chain said it offered prod­ucts includ­ing Ledger, Cloud and non­fun­gi­ble tokens as a ser­vice. The firm acquired Mea­sur­able Data Token (MDT) and its ecosys­tem prod­ucts for $100 mil­lion in July, which includ­ed blockchain ora­cle MeFi and cash­back app RewardMe.

Many of the reac­tions from Cryp­to Twit­ter on the Patri­ots’ spon­sor­ship seemed to be pos­i­tive, but some ques­tioned how blockchain tech­nol­o­gy would con­tribute to fans’ experiences.

As an hon­est, life­long Patri­ots fan, I’m super excit­ed and hap­py to see that you’re embrac­ing web3!

— Trevorwhatever.eth (@Trevorwhatever4) Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022

Relat­ed: Sports spon­sor­ship is help­ing legit­imize cryp­to in Aus­tralia — Coin­jar exec

Pro­fes­sion­al sports orga­ni­za­tions both in the Unit­ed States and abroad have seen major funds flow­ing in with cryp­to spon­sor­ships. Crypto.com inked a $700-mil­lion deal to rename Los Ange­les’ Sta­ples Cen­ter in 2021, lat­er sign­ing a five-year spon­sor­ship deal with the Aus­tralia Foot­ball League for $25 mil­lion and becom­ing one of the offi­cial spon­sors of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. How­ev­er, the exchange also report­ed­ly backed out of a rough­ly half-bil­lion dol­lar agree­ment with the Union of Euro­pean Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions Cham­pi­ons League in September. 

Coin­tele­graph reached out to the Patri­ots, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.