Sports affiliations are highly prized across luxury brands and, with Olympic fever in full swing, sporting heroes are luxury’s new bedfellows.
LVMH, a prominent partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, has recruited athlete ambassadors both within the organization and within houses such as Dior and Louis Vuitton.
The luxury organization also launched the immersive and gamified 3D platform The Maison of All Victories with Parisian studio Cosmic Shelter to deliver aspects of its partnership through photography, videos and 3D models with ambassadors sharing their inspirations, an editorial and updates social. as the games develop. Training
These are immersive reports that make the guest feel like they are participating in the action by simply standing by. Technology facilitates this proximity and can also provide sports enthusiasts with greater access and opportunities to express their fandom.
According to Rachel Conlan, global marketing director at Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, “blockchain is the next-level way to create those deeper interactions, and in the end, fans delight in more than just what happens in the stadium or on the track. “net.
Since 2022, Binance has partnered with Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the Pharrell Williams of football, on a series of NFT drops aimed at achieving this.
The collection is connected to various cities that have been vital to the football star’s career, each with a different story. The tokens come with perks like artistic posters and vintage jerseys, tickets to sporting events, and even the chance to play with Ronaldo at a special education festival in Portugal.
There is also a collect-to-win mechanism where multi-token holders can enter a draw to win a trip to Riyadh to watch one of the matches.
While a special limited edition auction on Sunday started at $777, the virtual collectibles command $35.
Throughout the partnership, Binance shared special content, such as a filmed lie detector check to see if Ronaldo’s answers to a series of questions were true or if it was an exercise in diplomacy.
“The goal,” Conlan explains, “is to give other people other rewards and incentives that they would never receive in a classic gift. You have to make sure there are genuine benefits and usefulness. “
Conlan has been a marketing professional for twenty years. Before accepting the Binance role in 2023, he spent five years overseeing global logo partnerships for the sports department at entertainment-leading Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he helped link IPs such as Formula 1 and McLaren with majors. airline logos and fashionable generations. .
Thanks to CAA, she began operating in the fintech and cryptocurrency sectors, attracted by the latter’s promise of monetary democratization. From there I moved from it to Binance a little over a year ago.
“I think it’s a very natural fit,” he says. “The crypto network is incredibly passionate about discussing virtual assets and we also see that sports enthusiasts are incredibly engaged and excited about their teams. So I think there is already an herbal synergy based on those attributes alone.
Sports and entertainment provide a platform to introduce cryptocurrencies to other people, he adds, “which is not just about capacity and price proposition, but in a much more emotional way based on storytelling and shared prices and an opportunity to establish the cultural agenda”.
In addition to engagement and storytelling, another domain is fan tokens, which allow enthusiasts to vote on club decisions, as well as verify memorabilia and prices.
“Blockchain generation can optimize the entire purchasing procedure within sports clubs. It is a practical solution to the black market for tickets, which is a major challenge in the world of sport,” he says, emphasizing that such authentication only applies to sport, but also to the luxury industry. in general. For example, the LVMH-backed Aura Blockchain consortium recently announced that OTB will use its blockchain generation to provide its consumers with a virtual certificate of authenticity for all of its luxury brands’ products.
Conlan’s role at Binance also has a mission of advocacy and education: to promote the broader benefits of cryptocurrencies and work to replace public perceptions. For example, it works with the government of Kazakhstan through a crypto university for which Binance is helping to set the agenda. .
Its platform’s partnership with Farfetch is further proof of this. The luxury fashion marketplace introduced Binance Pay, its crypto payment system powered by Binance, in 2022. The fashion and sports industries, he says, are sometimes early adopters of emerging technologies because they want to “anticipate what their consumers want. “
Conlan shows that Farfetch saw a 20% increase in crypto tickets between Q3 and Q4 2023 and a 57% increase in transaction volumes in Q1 2024. “It just shows the opportunity and potential for those genuine or genuine life utilities. Experiences that other people would possibly have with cryptocurrencies,” he says.
While Binance passed the two hundred million user milestone last weekend, it notes that the cryptocurrency is “still a very nascent industry,” still only at 10%. “Partnerships like Farfetch are key to expanding penetration. »