The last two years have seen an uptake in sports sponsorship deals from fintech, insurtech and crypto startups. $128B was raised by fintech last year, particularly for B2C fintech startups, with most of the money going towards marketing, sales, advertising, which helped acquiring customers fast by sponsoring sports teams and events.
If we look at Formula 1, 8 of 10 teams have a crypto sponsor. Crypto.com, one of main global crypto exchanges, has been the official sponsor for Formula 1 since June 2021. Due to this, the Miami Grand Prix is now to be officially called the Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix as part of a 9-year deal.
Even The Super Bowl, the biggest sporting and television event in the United States, has been dubbed the “Crypto Bowl” due to a surge in crypto advertisers. Coinbase, FTX, Crypto.com and other crypto startups have flooded the event with advertising time.
Fintech and insurtech are also sponsoring sports. For instance, Wefox, the world's 1st insurtech company, is the first ever back-of-the-shirt sponsor of the football club, A.C. Milan, which won the Italian championship this year. Wefox also has a Wefox Arena in Switzerland, home to FC Schaffhausen.
What is gonna happen now that some fintech and crypto giants are struggling? Sports sponsorships are usually multi-year long agreements, paid regularly over time and now with the market downturn some of these startup giants, especially in crypto, are already facing the first lawsuits over missing payments and backlash from fans and regulators.
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🇩🇪 No safety net from crypto collapses, German regulator warns. The financial regulatory authority for Germany, BaFin, has toughened warnings about consumers potentially losing all their crypto investments, unlike holdings with regulated banks. - CoinDesk
Latest Fintech deals
The largest this week:
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabian fintech platform Tamara, which offers buy now, pay later services, raised $100M in a series B equity round led by venture capital firm Sanabil Investments.
🇺🇸 AtoB, the first fintech payments platform to modernize the $790B trucking industry’s broken financial system, has raised $155M in Series B funding.
🇬🇧 Super Payments, a London, UK-based payments startup, raised a $27M in funding.
The round was led by Accel, with participation from Union Square Ventures, LocalGlobe, and angels.
🇺🇸 SuperLayer has secured $25M in a Web3.0 funding round led by Ethereum's scaling solution, Polygon.
Other notable deals:
🇲🇽 Koibanx, a Latin American asset tokenization company, raised a $22M Series A funding round.
🇺🇸 Pomelo announced a funding round of $20M in VC and $50M in warehouse facility for a total of $70M in seed financing, and is the first company to combine credit and international money transfer. Pomelo also announced its official launch and availability to serve its first corridor, the Philippines.
🇺🇸 Arc, a company that aims to give SaaS startups a way to borrow, save and spend in one place, has raised $20M in a Series A round of funding.
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