Continuing football's obsession with acquiring crypto sponsorship deals, Bundesliga club Hoffenheim earlier today announced a partnership with "leading crypto coin" Baby Doge Coin.
As part of the deal, Hoffenheim will develop "club-specific" NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which are a sort of digitized form of an asset, often concerning images or videos.
A meme coin similar to the infamous Doge Coin, Baby Doge has seen a huge rise in popularity. They have had astronomical levels of growth, with now over 1.3 million holders world-wide. Baby Doge's deal with Hoffenheim is effective immediately and will include placements on the adboards in the stadium. The logo will not appear on the club's shirt, for now.
"TSG Hoffenheim are happy to be working together with such an innovative and leading brand like Baby Doge. We are excited and looking forward to a successful partnership, where we'll bring an NFT collection from the club and other exciting projects to life," said Denni Strich, TSG's CEO.
"We are proud to become TSG Hoffenheim's official crypto partner and we're looking forward to making NFT technology available to the club's loyal fans. This collaboration will further strengthen Hoffenheim's reputation as a forward-looking, technology-driven Bundesliga club. The deal is also a win-win for the entire Baby Doge community, as it expands our digital presence in the global market and places Baby Doge in the Bundesliga, while we continue to build our presence in the EU," said Baby Doge's Mike Watson.
With the recent rise of the crypto and NFT markets, we have seen many companies from the space arrive in the football sponsorship world. Not too long ago, Bayer Leverkusen even signed a sleeve sponsor deal with Floki Inu, another "meme coin".
Launched last summer, to say that Baby Doge Coin has been a volatile asset would be an understatement. Most recently, it's been on a downswing as part of the larger evolution of the crypto market, but it's still well up compared to its initial price.
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