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 period of time would have caused investors and institutions – large and small – to flee. But even though Bitcoin’s most recent decline has indeed had negative repercussions on the blockchain space, institutions have not flinched. Instead, they doubled down.
Enterprise adoption is often the first step toward broader adoption, and signals from above suggest that the promises of mass adoption made by Bitcoin faithful over the past 15 years may indeed come to fruition.
However, as important as institutional adoption may be, historical precedent suggests that the greatest influx of users into the crypto space arrives through gateways that people are already familiar with. The rise of GameFi illustrated this at the start of the decade, when games were connected to the blockchain.
Now, another high-profile merger is underway that connects the boardroom to the playing fields. Sports – and soccer (or, as Americans call it, soccer) in particular – is one of the only recreational industries whose global financial and cultural reach exceeds that of gaming. The passion that emanates from soccer stadiums on match days is already connected to the blockchain industry in a way that risks completely changing the way the average user interacts with the cryptography.
Just as institutions are encouraging the adoption of soccer from the top down, this trend is seeing growing interest from soccer fans, from the ground up.
Institutions are adopting – but people are drawn to what they know
Throughout history, meaningful adoption of a new technology has rarely started with the public: it has 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 put their reputations on the line. These signals are picked up by the public and shifts in mainstream consciousness quickly ensue.
The Web3 space is currently undergoing such a change. An industry that was once obscured in the public eye by piles of jargon and constant volatility is now slowly becoming part of mainstream financial infrastructure.
Corporate bitcoin accumulation signals a cultural shift at the boardroom level as well as the financial level. But while this change at the top is a necessary step toward broader adoption, the fact is that people are still more likely to trust what they already know.
This notion was illustrated by the rise of GameFi (gaming financing) at the start of the decade, and the influx of new users that followed. Instead of jumping straight into the “crypto” 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 grew from $0.48 billion to over $22 billion. Between 2020 and 2021 alone, the number of active addresses on the Ethereum network (which was the main platform for the first wave of GameFi applications) increased from 138,000 to over 1.1 million, according to on-chain data from BitInfoCharts.
Studies show that in the same year, the total number of crypto users increased from 106 million to 295 million. Some estimates suggest that the GameFi industry accounted for 49% of all blockchain activity during this 12-month period.
Football: the only obsession to compete with gaming
Sports is one of the only other entertainment industries that rivals the global and intergenerational cultural reach of gaming. The Global Institute of Sport has estimated the global value of the total sports market at $2.65 trillion by the end of 2024.
Estimates vary on how much each sport is worth within this broad range, but some assessments suggest football accounts for as much as 43% of that figure. By any measure, football is the most popular sport in the world, with up to 3.5 billion fans worldwide, far ahead of the second most popular sport, cricket, with 2.5 billion fans.
With up to 4,000 professional football clubs in the world (and up to 350,000 at amateur level), it would be much easier to underestimate the value of football than to overestimate it.
So, just as GameFi served as a gateway for potentially millions of newcomers to the Web3 space in 2021, could soccer – and sports in general – be poised to become the next major bridge for the crypto-curious?
The evidence we have suggests the answer is yes.
When sport meets crypto
During the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom of 2018, opportunistic business graduates with all the requisite buzzwords on their LinkedIn profiles attempted to link the revolutionary potential of the crypto space to a number of completely unrelated industries. This resulted in short-lived projects like Dentist Coin ($TEETH), Toast Coin ($BREAD), and Garbage Coin ($TRUTH) — (These coins may or may not exist, but they perfectly capture the nature of the crypto industry at the time).
One cross-industry merger that has proven to be much larger in scope (pun intended) is that of soccer and crypto, which has given rise to a whole 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 form closer relationships with their favorite football teams.
This relationship was made possible by companies like Chiliz, pioneers of the “Fan Token” model, and gave fans a way to not only invest in the success of their teams, but also have a say in club decisions via fan surveys.
As well as being able to bank on the success of their favorite clubs, these token holders are also eligible for exclusive rewards such as VIP access on match days, dinners with the team and flying with the first team to away matches in continental competitions like the UEFA Champions League.
Fan Tokens burst onto the scene
Fast forward to 2025, and nearly 100 sports institutions have launched official tokens on a variety of blockchain networks, from Chiliz to Binance, Polygon, Ethereum and others.
And it’s not just soccer giants like Barcelona ($BAR), Manchester City ($CITY), AC Milan ($ACM), Arsenal ($AFC) and Napoli ($NAP), but also esports organizations, Formula 1 teams and mixed martial arts titans like the Ultimate Fighting Championship ($UFC).
Daily records of sports-related token trading volume suggest that this is not simply a niche market segment. Each day, the trading volume of these tokens rivals that of tokens in the top 20 by cryptocurrency market capitalization, approaching $1 billion during market peaks.
Additionally, blockchain data shows that soccer token valuations directly react to the success or failure of their teams on match days, especially during high-profile transcontinental competitions like the Champions League, Club World Cup, or FIFA International World Cup.
This gives soccer fans a way to understand market movements that doesn’t require extensive crypto knowledge.
Instead, they can apply their native football knowledge to the crypto space, anticipating price movements based on team form, opponent strength, player injuries, manager sackings, 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, increasing as goals are scored, decreasing as goals are conceded, and continuing to rise for almost a year as the soccer teams they are connected to go on long unbeaten streaks.
From meeting rooms to stadiums: football as a gateway drug
Although technological and cultural changes tend to happen from the top down, the adoption of emerging technologies still depends to a large extent on familiarity and how the average person relates to the choices presented to them.
The rise of GameFi has illustrated how technological adoption happens through experiences that the public has already mastered. With over 3.5 billion fans across the world, football has the cultural reach required to become the most powerful entry point for the next wave of users into the crypto space.
This wave of users is already changing the way crypto users read the market. Instead of speculating on the strength of jargon-laden white papers and confusing technological mechanics, fans, token holders and ordinary traders are applying their football knowledge to crypto charts – taking what they know and using it to learn about something they don’t know.
Sports-related crypto tokens have the potential to attract millions of users who would not otherwise interact with the crypto industry, and this shift is already underway.
Institutions are building the rails for mainstream adoption, but it’s familiarity with sports – and, in particular, football – that will drive users to browse them.
