In just over a month, between October and November 2025, the price of Bitcoin fell by more than 25%. In the very recent past, a major decline in such a short space of time would have sent investors and institutions (large and small) fleeing. But while Bitcoin’s most recent crash sent negative ripples through the blockchain space, institutions were unfazed. Instead, they doubled down.
Corporate adoption is often the first step toward broader adoption, and signs coming from above suggest that the promises of mass adoption made by Bitcoin faithful over the past 15 years might actually come true.
However, as important as institutional adoption may be, historical precedent suggests that the largest influx of users into the crypto space comes through gateways that people are already familiar with. The rise of GameFi exemplified this at the beginning of the decade when games became connected to blockchain.
Now another high-profile merger is underway, connecting the boardroom to the playing field. Sports – and football (or, as Americans call it, soccer) in particular – are one of the only recreational industries that has the global financial and cultural reach to surpass that of gaming. The passion that bubbles out of football stadiums on match day is already connecting to the blockchain industry in a way that may completely change the way the average user interacts with cryptocurrencies.
Just as institutions drive top-down adoption, this is facing growing interest from ground-up football fans.
Institutions adopt, but people gravitate toward what they know
Throughout history, significant adoption of any new technology rarely started with the public: it started with kings and queens, religious leaders, entrepreneurs, eccentric inventors, and titans of industry.
Today it starts with institutions, banks and multinational corporations, whose adoption indicates that a new asset class is trustworthy enough to stake its reputation on. Those signals are picked up by the public, and soon changes in consciousness occur in the mainstream.
The Web3 space is undergoing precisely that change right now. An industry that was once obscured in the public eye by a lot of jargon and constant volatility is now slowly becoming part of the routine financial infrastructure.
The corporate accumulation of bitcoins indicates a cultural shift at both the boardroom and financial levels. But while this change at the top is a necessary step toward broader adoption, the fact is that people are even more inclined to trust what they already know.
This notion was exemplified by the rise of GameFi (game financing) at the beginning of the decade, and the resulting influx of new users that followed. Instead of jumping straight into the “cryptocurrency” space per se, millions of new users entered the industry through the gateway of something they already knew and loved.
Data shows that between January 2018 and February 2022, the combined market capitalization of the GameFi space rose from $480 million to more than $22 billion. Between 2020 and 2021 alone, the number of active addresses on the Ethereum network (which was the primary platform for the initial wave of GameFi apps) rose from 138,000 to more than 1.1 million, according to on-chain data from BitInfoCharts.
Studies show that in the same year, the total number of cryptocurrency users increased from 106 million to 295 million. Some estimates suggest that the GameFi industry accounted for 49% of all blockchain activity in that 12-month period.
Football: the only obsession with the rival game
One of the only entertainment industries that rivals the global and intergenerational cultural reach of gaming is sports. The Global Institute of Sport valued the global value of the total sports market at $2.65 trillion by the end of 2024.
Estimates vary on the value of each individual sport within that broad group, however some assessments suggest football accounts for up to 43% of the figure. By all measures, football is the most popular sport in the world, with a staggering 3.5 billion fans worldwide, far ahead of the second most popular sport, cricket, with 2.5 billion fans.
With no less than 4,000 professional football clubs worldwide (and up to 350,000 at amateur level), it would be much easier to underestimate the value of football than to overstate it.
So, just as GameFi acted as a gateway for potentially millions of newcomers to the Web3 space in 2021, could football (and sports in general) be set to act as the next big bridge for the crypto-curious?
The evidence we have at hand would suggest that the answer is yes.
When sports met cryptocurrencies
During the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom of 2018, opportunistic business graduates with all the requisite buzzwords on their LinkedIn profiles attempted to link the revolutionary potential of the crypto space to any number of completely unrelated industries. This resulted in short-lived projects like Dentist Coin ($TEETH), Toast Coin ($BREAD), and Garbage Coin ($TRUTH) – (Those coins may or may not exist, but they perfectly convey the nature of the crypto industry at the time.)
One industry merger that proved to have much more potential (pun intended) was football and cryptocurrencies, resulting in an entirely new market segment known as SportFi (sports finance).
In 2019, global football institutions Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain led this merger by launching official club tokens for fans who wanted to have a closer relationship with their favorite football teams.
This relationship was made possible by companies like Chiliz, which pioneered the ‘Fan Token’ model and provided fans with a way to not only invest in the success of their teams, but also have a say in club decisions through fan surveys.
As well as being able to count on the success of their favorite clubs, these token holders are also eligible for exclusive rewards such as VIP access on match days, attending team dinners and flying with the first team to away matches in continental competitions such as the UEFA Champions League.
Fan tokens burst onto the scene
Fast forward to 2025 and nearly 100 sporting institutions have launched official tokens on a variety of blockchain networks, from Chiliz to Binance, Polygon, Ethereum and others.
And it’s not just football giants like Barcelona ($BAR), Manchester City ($CITY), AC Milan ($ACM), Arsenal ($AFC) and Napoli ($NAP), but also esports organisations, Formula One teams and mixed martial arts titans like the Ultimate Fighting Championship ($UFC).
Daily trading volume records for sports-linked tokens suggest that this is not simply a niche market segment. On any given day, the trading volume of these tokens rivals that of tokens in the top 20 crypto market capitalization, approaching $1 billion during market peaks.
What’s more, blockchain data shows that football token valuations directly react to the success or failure of their teams during match days, especially during high-profile intercontinental competitions such as the Champions League, Club World Cup or the FIFA International World Cup.
This offers football fans a way to understand market movements that does not require in-depth knowledge of cryptocurrencies.
Instead, they can apply their native football knowledge to the crypto space, anticipating price movements depending on team form, strength of opponents, player injuries, manager dismissals, player signings, club investments and much more.
In fact, soccer token prices have been shown to react not only to weekly results, but also to minute-by-minute action on the field, rising when goals are scored, falling when goals are conceded, and rising for almost a year as the soccer teams they are connected to maintain long unbeaten streaks.
From boardrooms to stadiums: football as a gateway drug
While technological and cultural changes tend to come from the top down, the adoption of emerging technologies still depends largely on familiarity and how the average person relates to the options presented to them.
The rise of GameFi exemplified how technological adoption occurs through experiences that the public already knows. With over 3.5 billion fans worldwide, football has the cultural reach to become the most powerful entry point for the next wave of users into the crypto space.
That wave of users is already changing the way cryptocurrency users interpret the market. Instead of speculating on the soundness of jargon-laden white papers and baffling technological mechanics, fans, token holders, and everyday traders are applying their football knowledge to crypto charts, taking what they know and using it to familiarize themselves with something they don’t know.
Sports-linked crypto tokens have the potential to attract millions of users who otherwise would not have interacted with the crypto industry, and that change is already underway.
Institutions are in the process of building the rails for widespread adoption, but it is familiarity with sports (and, in particular, football) that will carry users through them.
