Chelsea concludes sponsorship contract with crypto trading platform

The Chelsea Football Club has concluded a 20 million pension sponsoring contract with a digital-asset platform, while the team of the Premier League is preparing to leave Roman Abramovich behind.

whalefin, a platform for trade and lending cryptocurrencies, has agreed to sponsor the London club from next season, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The deal shows the commercial attractiveness of Chelsea, since Abramovich is waiting for the special permission of the British government to sell a group of investors under the leadership of the US Financer to Todd Boehly, who won a competition auction last week.

Chelsea and Whalefin had agreed the deal in January a month before Russia marched to Ukraine, the person said.

The war forced Abramovich to offer the club for sale, and it was then occupied with sanctions. Chelsea is currently working under a special license that prevents the club from selling new goods, and which also includes freezing funds that the club receives.

But such advertising agreements show how football clubs make agreements with cryptocurrency platforms to increase their commercial income.

The rival of the Premier League, Manchester United, agreed in February a sponsorship for training kits with the blockchain company Tezos. The following month, the reigning champion Manchester City announced a global partnership with the okx crypto exchange.

chelsea and other clubs in the Premier League have a global range through transmission contracts worth more than £ 10 billion in the next three seasons and social media accounts with millions of followers. Sports teams helped this magnitude to increase the sponsorship revenue through crypto partnerships.

Boeehsy's group, which includes the investment company Clearlake Capital, Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners, and Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, acquired Chelsea for £ 2.5 billion, a sum that is stored and frozen in a British bank account.

The government insisted that Abramovich cannot benefit from the proceeds, and the oligarch has promised to donate the money for charitable purposes.

The group plans to invest a further £ 1.75 billion in Chelsea.

The association is also looking for a new main jerseys after the telecommunications group Three decided to suspend its partnership after the United Kingdom of Abramovich put under sanctions in March.

Chelsea is under additional pressure to achieve commercial income, since the Stamford Bridge Stadium with 40,000 places is much smaller than the stadiums of large European rivals such as Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

The commercial income of Chelsea was £ 153 million in the 2020-21 season, which corresponds to around 35 percent of the total income of £ 434. The club made most of the radio contracts that were £ 273 million.

However, Chelsea financed

Abramovich for two decades after he bought the club in 2003 for £ 140 million, and acquired top players to take part in the greatest trophies in sport and win them, including the Elite Uefa Champions League and the English championship title.

The Amber Group, based in Singapore, has Whalefin. Amber's shareholders include the Temasek investment group from Singapore, Sequoia China, Pantera Capital, Tiger Global Management, Tru Arrow Partners and Coinbase Ventures.

Amber, which, among other cryptodicists, also conducts business on behalf of customers, collected $ 200 million of investors in a financing round in February that the company rated $ 3 billion.

Whalefin is the AMBER Consumer -oriented app. Sky News first reported on the sponsoring deal.