FTX Teams Up With Sports Giants, Super Bowl To Prove Its Crypto Power

Crypto exchange FTX has been spending heavily on sponsorships with big sports teams and events to assert its place in the crypto world.

Some of its famed partners are football superstar Tom Brady, the NBA’S Miami Heat, Washington Wizards, Golden State Warriors, Mercedes F1 team, The Capitals, and recently, the Super Bowl.

On Sunday, millions of Americans tuning in to the Super Bowl LVI will get to see advertisements from the trading platform FTX which will hold a giveaway of millions of dollars in bitcoin.

FTX Woos Regulators

However, the commercials are more intended to persuade U.S. officials to ease its regulations on the technology, rather than getting people to download the app, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in an interview with the Washington Post.

“We want to make sure that we’re painting, hopefully, a healthy image of ourselves and the industry. We’re optimistic that we’re going to be able to grow our U.S. business — a lot of that is working with U.S. regulators on bringing new products to the market,” Bankman-Fried said.

The United States currently bans licenses for cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, which FTX conducts in other countries. The brand’s American affiliate, FTX US, is licensed only as a crypto exchange.

Total crypto market cap at $1.99 trillion in the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com

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Crypto In Sports?

FTX is aiming for sports partnership because their fans are suitably crypto enthusiasts as well, its CEO – who is also a baseball fan – said.

The crypto brand announced last October that it has become the long-term crypto partner for major racing, basketball, and baseball teams. FTX then forged links with collegiate cage teams like the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team.

FTX reached out to individual sports stars, such as Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, and Red Sox legend and recent baseball Hall of Fame inductee David Ortiz.

“Sports fans are two times more likely to know about crypto than non-sports fans. Avid sports fans are nearly 3x as likely,” said Bankman-Fried in an interview with Markets Insider.

The million dollar-crypto giveaway in the Super Bowl comes with a twist: the amount of the prize will depend on what time the ad will run as stated on the website. For instance, if the ad runs at 10:00 p.m. EST, FTX would give away 10.00 BTC to winners.

FTX will tweet the commercial and pin the tweet and players must follow the account and retweet the pinned tweet between the time the commercial aired and 11:59 p.m. EST.

Four winners will then be chosen to claim their prizes afterward, but they must first have their own FTX accounts.

The Super Bowl is invariably the highest-rated television program of the year, accounting for 28 of the top 30 broadcasts in United States TV history.

Bankman-Fried has favored football as part of a marketing tactic that emphasizes sports as the fastest growing customer base for cryptocurrency adoption.

The Super Bowl championship game will pit the NFC champion Los Angeles Rams against the AFC title-holder Cincinnati Bengals.

Related Reading | FTX To Buy Japanese Exchange In Asian Expansion Move

Image from Defispace, chart from TradingView.com