Manchester soccer rivalries commence in field of Web3

Leading English soccer club Manchester City has announced an inaugural partnership with cryptocurrency exchange OKX across both its men’s and women’s teams, as well as the club’s emerging esports ventures.

According to the club’s press release, the collaboration will focus on “exclusive experiences for OKX’s global customer base, in addition to an in-stadium presence across the Etihad Stadium and Academy Stadium.”

OKX, which rebranded from OKEx earlier this year, is the second-largest spot exchange in the industry, reportedly having reportedly over 20 million customers and facilitating over $4.3 billion in normalized trading volume over the past 24 hours. This total places it ahead of Coinbase, which is in third at approximately $3.3 billion, but a ways behind Binance’s dominance at the top of the table with over $16.2 billion.

OKX CEO Jay Hao noted that “Manchester City is a Club that represents the effect football has to make a positive difference in people’s lives, to bring people together around a shared love of the beautiful game.”

Welcome to @okx, Official Cryptocurrency Partner of Manchester City.

Game On!

— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 4, 2022

Related: Penalties and extra time: The scoreboard for soccer club crypto deals

Amid an ever-present rivalry and fierce jostle for bragging rights in the city of Manchester — especially in light of the upcoming derby match this Sunday — both clubs’ commercial sides are taking considerable strides in the digital asset space, respectively scoring lucrative deals with industry firms and racing to expand their influence in the Web3 sphere.

Manchester United preceded its counterparts by teaming up with blockchain firm Tezos in early February to become its official training kit and technology partner, and it has plans to enter the metaverse and nonfungible token (NFT) collectible spaces.

In April 2021, Forbes published statistics ranking the world’s most valuable soccer clubs. While Spanish giants Barcelona and Real Madrid took the top spots, Manchester United came in fourth with a value of $4.2 billion and a 2020 revenue of $643 million. Meanwhile, Manchester City came in sixth place at $4 billion and $609 million.

Similarly, fellow Premier League club Arsenal, based in North London, attempted to enter the fan-token market only to be halted in their endeavors by the Advertising Standards Authority for breaching rules and, according to the regulatory body, “irresponsibly taking advantage of consumers’ inexperience and for failing to illustrate the risk of the investment.”