English Premier League’s Chelsea Football Club and cryptocurrency digital investing platform WhaleFin intend to sign a sleeve deal at a reported £20 million cost.
Hyundai has been the primary logo featured for the past four years. Tentative plans are for WhaleFin’s logo to appear on both the men’s and women’s teams’ sleeves beginning in the upcoming 2022-23 season.
The new WhaleFin deal, effectively, represents a doubling of Chelsea’s current 2018 deal signed with Hyundai for 5 years and £50 million, an average of £10 million a year.
WhaleFin also pays Spanish club Atletico Madrid £40 million a year for similar branding rights.
The news is noteworthy as it is Chelsea’s first dabbling in the world of crypto – and a big splash to boot! Fellow EPL Club Liverpool not long ago agreed to a similar deal. Manchester United too has been associated with Tezos with their logo visible across its training gear.
Nicknamed “the Blues” for its team color, parallel conversations are ongoing about swapping out Three, the existing main shirt sponsor. Perhaps displeased with the process, the mobile network has elected to suspend its sponsorship despite having one year remaining on its deal with Chelsea – which might explain why Three’s logo continues to appear on the front of players’ jerseys.
Under normal circumstances, amid Chelsea’s ongoing reported sale efforts by Roman Abramovich, the club would have been precluded from approaching such negotiations with WaleFin. However, the contracts between WhaleFin and Chelsea were agreed to backed in January before any restrictions were put in place.
WhaleFin is owned by Amber Group with headquarters in Singapore. It is a FinTech unicorn with backing from some of the largest venture capitalists globally, including, Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, Pantera Capital, and Blockchain.com.
WhaleFin is seeking to position itself as a means toward offering access to the emerging digital lifestyle and potentially lucrative investment yields all easily accessible via its embedded portfolio management tools. The company trades over $1 trillion in over 150 countries worldwide spanning dozens of digital assets.
Michael Wu, CEO of Amber Group, felt the timing could not be more perfect given its ambitions to grow on a global scale, and described the fit with Chelsea a wonderful association.
Chelsea is in my sports pundits’ eyes viewed as one of the preeminent football (er, soccer for our American brethren) clubs across the world. This is due to a combination of its financial backing and continued pattern of success on the pitch (er, field again for our American readers).
Todd Boehly will oversee the new leadership at a reported record purchase price for any professional sports club at £4.25 billion. Todd is Co-Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Controlling Member of Eldridge Industries, among other successful business ventures.
On the pitch, Chelsea has cemented itself as one of the greatest clubs in its sport. To date, they have won six league titles, 8 FA Cups, 5 League Cups, 4 FA Charity/Community Shields, 2 UEFA Cup Winners’ Cups, 2 UEFA Europa Leagues, 2 Champions Leagues, and 2 UEFA Super Cups.