Italian Serie A soccer club Inter Milan (Inter) is having issues with blockchain sponsor DigitalBits, which allegedly failed to follow through on its financial commitments to the football club. Now, Inter has removed the DigitalBits logo from its official website and the billboards during matches. It might pull the branding from the jersey, but that’s a bigger deal, according to Gazzetta Dello Sport. Potentially the club could pursue legal action against DigitalBits for the missed payments.
Before signing a $100m deal with Inter in September, DigitalBits and Zytara announced a sponsorship deal with AS Roma in July last year. The logo still appears on the Roma website. They were relatively unknown names in the crypto space at the time.
Turning to Inter, the company began as its sleeve sponsor before upgrading to the shirt front, replacing crypto company Socios.com.
At the time of the AS Roma deal, we noted that the sponsorship value was just under half of DigitalBits’ $86 million market capitalization, making it arguably a risky financial move. After that, its token increased in price significantly, reaching a capitalization of $625 million by November 2021. However its current capitalization sits at a mere $8.5 million as of August 10.
Some might say that the takeaway is to avoid crypto companies without a proven track record. Yet, some significant crypto bankruptcies have involved big names like Celsius and Three Arrows Capital.
DigitalBits is not the first crypto company to face these issues. Bitci’s sponsorship deals with McLaren, Sporting Lisbon and Spezia all fell through within less than a year when Bitci failed to pay up. Other collaborations were abandoned before they even began. Manchester City’s proposed partnership with 3Key and FC Barcelona’s NFT deal with Ownix both fell through for due diligence reasons.
