Undoubtedly, the FIFA World Cup is the world’s biggest sporting event right after the Olympics. While the biggest companies strive to put their names around the arena, this year, FIFA chose Crypto.com as its main sponsor. Due to this decision, an audience of 4 billion people will gaze their ears and eyes towards the crypto world from Nov 20 till Dec 18, launching the biggest exposure the crypto space has ever received in the mainstream.
The Crypto-Current State of The Upcoming World Cup’s Host Country and The Region
The 2022 FIFA World Cup will take place in Qatar, United Arab Emirates – being well known for its growing interest in developing crypto adoption, which has been the biggest case in comparison to anywhere else in the world. Assumably, this has been due to some of the biggest crypto players establishing regional headquarters in UAE – giving it a possibility to claim the “global hub of cryptocurrencies” honorary title.
While crypto awareness is ongoing, the circumstances have changed for the previous host of the World Cup – Russia. As of its invasion of Ukraine in February, sanctions of the West have brought uncertainty to Russian citizens, forcing them to invest more actively in crypto. But while being as decentralized as possible, crypto culture’s still facing huge challenges with crypto-exchanges sanction-driver difficulties.
Visa, NFTs, blockchain – probable MVPs of the World CupxCrypto.com
Moving back to the less problematic crypto (football) field – the 2022 FIFA’s Crypto.com sponsorship is even more boosted with Visa collaboration, resulting from the need for rising awareness for the event and facilitating transactions for Crypto.com debit cards. Visa will auction 5 NFTs featuring notable goals from the previous World Cups until Nov 8, donating all the proceeds to charity. In addition to those, fans will also be able to create their own NFTs – GIFs of their movements in a 4-minute-long 6–on-6 match at the FIFA Fan Festival, colored in their favorite national teams. Players can choose to receive their GIFs as NFTs through Crypto.com.
In addition to NFT boosting, FIFA has also incorporated a blockchain partner in this year’s event – Algogrand, which is by far the greenest blockchain technology company, offering high-speed and low-cost transactions while having a minimal environmental impact. While Algogrand gets huge exposure, it’ll provide an official, blockchain-supported wallet solution for FIFA and assist with the development of FIFA’s digital asset strategy.
Why now? – Fan tokens & the specifics of the 2022 FIFA fever
It’s not surprising that as days get closer to the World Cup beginning, fan tokens have not only emerged but have seen some dramatic increases. Besides crypto playing quite a role in this year’s World Cup, the 2022 FIFA will probably be the final for football gods Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Argentina (ARG) and Portugal (POR) tokens have been on a persuasive rise for the World Cup 2022 over the past two weeks. While fan tokens are great for supporting our favorite national teams and gaining some benefits from interacting with players, they’ve marked themselves as an alternative to online betting and show a rather fruitful potential for investment.
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