Football World Takes Steps Towards Blockchain Adoption: From 2018 to FIFA's Own Blockchain

Update 25 September 2026: Eight years after this article, blockchain in football has moved from single club experiments to the governing body itself. FIFA launched its own blockchain on Avalanche technology in 2025, and by the end of 2025 the stablecoin issuer Tether held a minority stake in Juventus. The original report from September 2018 follows below as a dated snapshot, with statements that could not be verified removed.

What has happened in football and crypto since 2018?

The trend this article described in 2018 did not slow down, but it changed shape. Instead of ICOs and players bought with Bitcoin, the years after 2018 brought fan tokens, large sponsorship deals and, most recently, blockchain infrastructure run by football's world governing body.

• Fan tokens: Paris Saint-Germain, whose partnership with Socios.com this article mentioned in 2018, went on to launch its own fan token on the Socios platform, and many other European clubs followed. In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled in 2021 that ads by Arsenal for its fan token were misleading, one of the first regulatory limits on crypto marketing in football.
• Sponsorship: Crypto companies became major sponsors in the 2021 and 2022 bull market. The exchange Crypto.com was an official sponsor of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
• FIFA's own blockchain: On 11 June 2025, FIFA announced that its digital collectibles platform FIFA Collect had migrated to the new FIFA Blockchain, an EVM-compatible network built on Avalanche technology. Ahead of the 2026 World Cup, FIFA Collect sold digital "Right to Buy" tokens that gave holders early access to tickets.
• Club ownership: Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, built up a stake in Juventus. In December 2025 it offered to buy the controlling stake of the Agnelli family holding Exor, and Exor's board unanimously rejected the proposal on 13 December 2025.

Crypto payments for tickets are becoming normal as well: our article on Bitpanda and football tickets for the 2026/27 season shows how a European broker is using the sport today.

How was blockchain used in football in 2018?

By 2018, the growing accessibility of blockchain technology had led to more and more integrations of the technology and of cryptocurrency into the daily business of professional football clubs across Europe. News of clubs exploring these options arrived almost every month.

In England, Premier League clubs made headlines with blockchain and crypto deals that year. Arsenal became the first major club to sign a sponsorship deal with a cryptocurrency company in January 2018, with CashBet, which was promoting its initial coin offering (ICO) at the time. In August 2018, seven Premier League clubs signed sponsorship deals with the trading platform eToro.

Fan engagement was the second theme. Paris Saint-Germain, then French champions, announced a partnership with Socios.com to bring distributed ledger technology to its fans. In Germany, HYPD partnered with Schalke 04 to build an ambassador marketing platform for fan campaigns.

How was cryptocurrency used in football in 2018?

Cryptocurrency itself also moved into the spotlight. Gibraltar United made headlines as the first club to pay its players in cryptocurrency, at a time when Gibraltar was creating one of the first legal frameworks for ICOs. According to Forbes, Italian club Rimini 1912 became the first club to be partly purchased with cryptocurrency: Quantocoin acquired 25% of the club with its own coin of the same name. And Turkish amateur club Harunustaspor made history by paying for a player, Omar Faruk Kiroglu, partly in Bitcoin.

Football is a business, with clubs listed on stock exchanges, billionaire owners and commercial agreements worth billions. Seen that way, it was no surprise that clubs adopted cryptocurrency across a range of commercial activities.

Could blockchain make football more transparent?

The 2018 article linked the trend to football's governance problems. In May 2015, Swiss police arrested several FIFA officials in Zurich at the request of the US Department of Justice, which had charged them with corruption offences. In 2018, FIFA revised its code of ethics, introducing a ten-year limitation period for bribery cases, as well as a clause that barred people bound by the code from making defamatory public statements about FIFA. Critics at the time argued that both changes made scrutiny harder.

The argument for blockchain was that an open, tamper-resistant ledger could make payments such as player wages and agent fees easier to trace. UEFA's rules at the time already required clubs to disclose information on spending, and supporters of the technology saw distributed ledgers as a way to make such reporting more reliable.

That hope has only partly come true. The blockchain projects that reached scale in football, from fan tokens to FIFA Collect, are about fan engagement and ticketing, not about making transfers and fees transparent. Anyone who wants to understand the technology behind them can start with our guide on what a blockchain is, and collectors can compare platforms in our NFT marketplace comparison.

FAQ

Does FIFA have its own blockchain?

Yes. FIFA Collect has run on the FIFA Blockchain since June 2025. It is an EVM-compatible network built on Avalanche technology.

Which football club was first to sign a crypto sponsorship?

Arsenal was the first major club to sign a sponsorship deal with a cryptocurrency company, CashBet, in January 2018.

What are football fan tokens?

Fan tokens are digital tokens issued by or for a club that give holders access to polls, rewards or experiences. Paris Saint-Germain was one of the first major clubs to launch one on the Socios platform.

Does Tether own part of Juventus?

As of December 2025, Tether held a minority stake in Juventus. Its offer to take over the controlling stake from Exor was rejected by Exor's board on 13 December 2025.