In just over ten years, cryptocurrencies went from the livery of a NASCAR car paid for by an online whip-round to deals worth hundreds of millions with Formula 1, the NBA and the Champions League. Then FTX collapsed, and many of those logos disappeared within a few months. In 2026 crypto sponsorships in sport still exist, but they are a different thing: fewer, more regulated and far more selective. Here is how it went, and what it teaches anyone working in sponsorship.

Updated September 2026.

In short: after the first experiments in 2014, crypto companies exploded into sport between 2021 and 2022, reaching more than 600 million dollars a year in new deals. The collapse of FTX on 11 November 2022 blew up many contracts and changed the industry. Today the brands that remain are mostly those that invested to build a reputation, such as Crypto.com, Formula 1 partner until 2030, Kraken with Williams and Coinbase with Aston Martin, in a market that SportQuake valued at 565 million dollars in the 2024/25 season, below the peak but growing again.

The origins: an online whip-round and a college bowl

The first crypto sponsorship to make headlines in American sport dates back to May 2014, when the Dogecoin community raised around 55,000 dollars to put its Shiba Inu dog on Josh Wise’s No. 98 Ford at Talladega, in NASCAR. Wise finished twentieth, but the image went around the world. A few months later BitPay signed a three-year deal with ESPN Events to give its name to the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl, a college football game first played on 26 December 2014.

In football, the first major club to sign with a cryptocurrency was Arsenal, with CashBet Coin, in January 2018. A year and a half later, on 28 November 2019, Juventus launched the first fan token, $JUV, with Socios, opening a trend that would involve dozens of clubs.

The 2021 and 2022 boom

The real leap came with the pandemic and the surge in cryptocurrency prices. According to GlobalData, the annual value of crypto sponsorships in sport went from 16.9 million dollars in 2020 to 607.3 million in 2021, with a 488% increase in the number of deals. In the NBA, according to IEG, crypto brands spent more than 130 million in the 2021/22 season, compared with less than 2 million the season before.

Some of the deals from those years:

• FTX and Miami: in March 2021 the exchange bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena for 135 million dollars over 19 years, a first for a crypto company in a major American venue;
• Crypto.com and Formula 1: in June 2021 it became the championship’s first global crypto partner, with a five-year deal worth more than 100 million dollars;
• Crypto.com and the UFC: ten years for 175 million dollars, according to press reports;
• Crypto.com Arena: since 25 December 2021 the Staples Center in Los Angeles has carried the Crypto.com name, under a 700 million dollar, 20-year contract;
• FTX and Mercedes: a partnership launched in September 2021;
• Tezos: Red Bull Racing’s blockchain partner from 2021 and sponsor of Manchester United’s training kit, for more than 20 million pounds a year;
• Bybit and Red Bull: 150 million dollars over three years, signed in February 2022, the largest annual crypto deal ever seen in sport up to that point;
• OKX and McLaren: primary partner from the 2022 Miami Grand Prix;
• Binance and Cristiano Ronaldo: a multi-year partnership for NFT collections, with the first drop in November 2022.

For many teams it was easy, instant money. For many observers, us included, it was above all the sign of a bubble: very young, dematerialised companies with huge budgets and the ability to change strategy overnight.

The crash: FTX and the domino effect

The first cracks appeared before FTX. On 1 September 2022 Crypto.com pulled out of a five-year, 495 million dollar deal with the Champions League over licensing problems in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Then, on 11 November 2022, FTX filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States, declaring liabilities of between 10 and 50 billion dollars.

The consequences for sport were immediate:

• Mercedes suspended its partnership with FTX the same day and removed the logos from its cars for the Brazilian Grand Prix;
• in Miami a federal bankruptcy court terminated the arena naming contract, and after a spell as Miami-Dade Arena the venue became the Kaseya Center;
• in December 2022 Tezos left Red Bull, explaining that the deal was no longer in line with its strategy;
• on 12 January 2023 Ferrari ended its deal with Velas early, a little more than a year after it was announced;
• in November 2023 Cristiano Ronaldo was named in a 1 billion dollar class action in Florida over his promotion of Binance NFTs.

We also wrote about it in the review in our article on sports marketing in 2022, where the concern that there was more sizzle than steak proved well founded.

From 2023 to today: who stayed and who arrived

The industry did not disappear, it changed. Some brands kept or strengthened their presence, others arrived after the crash with more cautious contracts:

• Crypto.com returned to the Champions League in August 2024 as the competition’s first exclusive crypto partner, and in December 2024 renewed with Formula 1 until 2030, including the title sponsorship of the Miami Grand Prix;
• Kraken has been Williams’ crypto partner since 2023 and in January 2026 signed a long-term renewal, with its logo on the front wing of the FW48;
• Coinbase has partnered Aston Martin since February 2025, with a contract paid entirely in USDC, the first time a Formula 1 team has announced a payment in stablecoin;
• Red Bull said goodbye to Bybit at the end of 2024 and since February 2025 its exchange partner has been Gate.io;
• OKX remains with McLaren, on a contract that expires at the end of 2026 with a special livery for Monza and Madrid, and since 2023 has been on Manchester City’s sleeve, for more than 70 million dollars over three years;
• in MotoGP Bitget was a regional partner of four Grands Prix in 2025: Italy, Germany, Catalonia and Indonesia;
• in English football, on the other hand, Tezos left Manchester United in June 2025, although in the 2025/26 season thirteen of the twenty Premier League clubs still have a crypto partner.

The numbers describe a market that has shrunk but is alive. According to SportQuake, crypto spending on sports sponsorship was 565 million dollars in the 2024/25 season, 20% more than the previous year but below the peak of 685 million in 2022/23. Formula 1 has become the leading platform, with 174 million, and Crypto.com the biggest investor, with 213 million.

The rules have changed

The biggest difference compared with 2021 is regulation. In the European Union the MiCA regulation entered into force on 29 June 2023: the stablecoin rules have applied since 30 June 2024 and the rest since 30 December 2024, with a transitional period for service providers that ends on 1 July 2026 at the latest. In the United Kingdom, since 8 October 2023 crypto promotions have had to comply with FCA rules, including for overseas firms, and on 3 June 2026 the FCA warned football clubs not to lend themselves to sponsorships with unauthorised financial firms. As early as 2021 the British advertising regulator, the ASA, had ruled that an ad for Arsenal fan tokens breached the code, because it trivialised investment in cryptocurrencies and took advantage of consumers’ inexperience. In the United States, finally, the GENIUS Act, the first federal law on stablecoins, was signed on 18 July 2025.

The market has also remained volatile: bitcoin passed 100,000 dollars for the first time in December 2024, hit an all-time high of more than 126,000 dollars on 6 October 2025 and was around 86,000 dollars on 22 September 2026.

What it teaches anyone working in sponsorship

The story of crypto sponsorships is a useful case study well beyond the sector. A few practical lessons:

• Due diligence on the sponsor matters as much as due diligence on the property. A brand that grows too fast, in a lightly regulated sector, brings reputational risk for the team and for the other partners.
• The contract must plan for the unexpected. Upfront payment schedules, termination clauses and guarantees made the difference between those who lost money and those who did not. We also cover this in our article on clauses that protect investments in sport.
• The rules change from market to market. A global sponsorship must take into account what can be communicated in Europe, the United Kingdom or the United States, especially for financial products.
• The survivors are those who build a brand, not those who ride a bubble. The names that remain are the ones that used sport to become known and trusted, with long contracts and consistent activations, not for a quick visibility play.

There is also an ethical issue that properties cannot ignore: a review of 30 studies published in Frontiers in Psychiatry in 2026 found that fan tokens behave like speculative instruments, with a strong overlap between cryptocurrency trading and problem gambling. For a team or a championship, choosing a sponsor also means choosing what to offer its fans.

If you are considering a sponsorship, as a sponsor or as a property, we can help you build it on solid foundations: let’s talk.

Sources: The Drive, Dogecoin in NASCAR; CNN, the Dogecoin fundraiser for Josh Wise; Socios, five years of fan tokens; Coin World, the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl; PR Newswire, Arsenal and CashBet Coin; Verdict and GlobalData, crypto spending in sport; SportsPro, crypto sponsorships in the NBA; CoinDesk, FTX and the Miami arena; Decrypt, Crypto.com and Formula 1; Yahoo Sports, Crypto.com and the UFC; NBA, Crypto.com Arena; SportsPro, Tezos and Red Bull; McLaren, OKX primary partner; CoinDesk, Bybit and Red Bull; CoinDesk, Crypto.com and the Champions League; CoinDesk, the FTX bankruptcy; RaceFans, Mercedes suspends FTX; CBS News, from FTX Arena to Kaseya Center; ESPN, Ferrari ends Velas deal; Crypto.com, the return to the Champions League; Crypto.com, the Formula 1 renewal to 2030; Williams, the Kraken renewal; Aston Martin, the Coinbase partnership; BlackBook Motorsport, Gate.io and Red Bull; Marketing Brew, OKX and McLaren; McLaren, the 2026 OKX livery; Decrypt, OKX and Manchester City; MotoGP, Bitget regional partner; The Sponsor, Tezos and Manchester United; Protos, Premier League crypto sponsors; SportsPro and SportQuake, crypto spending in 2024/25; AMF, the MiCA regulation; FCA, the crypto promotion rules; FCA, the warning to football clubs; ASA, the Arsenal ruling; CoinDesk, the GENIUS Act; NBC News, bitcoin passes 100,000 dollars; Fortune, the bitcoin price in September 2026; NBC News, the lawsuit against Ronaldo; Frontiers in Psychiatry, fan tokens and problem gambling.