September 27th, 2021, Christien Pheby
As cryptocurrency attempts to go mainstream, more and more sports teams are signing partners with coin exchanges, NFT platforms, and other service providers operating within the industry. But what do fans think?
Looking at football (soccer) and motorsport fans in the US, Germany, and Great Britain reveals a degree of scepticism. Ask people who follow the beautiful game, and a majority say they don’t understand cryptocurrency. In Germany (63%) and the US (62%) more than three in five claim they don’t know what it is, compared to three-quarters of British football fans (75%).
Looking past their familiarity with cryptocurrency, many football fans are sceptical of it. In Britain and Germany, this amounts to three in five followers of the sport (Britain 58%; Germany 60%) and in the US, just over half (54%) of fans say it is not to be trusted. They’re also more likely to see it as a passing craze: more than half of Britons, half of Germans (53%) and nearly half of American soccer fans (46%) see cryptocurrency as a fad. American soccer fans are more optimistic about Bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins in the long-term: two in five (39%) think cryptocurrency is the future, compared to three in ten Germans (28%) and less than a fifth of Britons (17%).
Motorsport fans hold broadly similar views: most don’t understand cryptocurrency, most don’t trust it, and a small proportion of people who follow the sport are willing to go all-in on it and forgo their bank account.
Attitudes football and motorsport fans hold towards sponsorship
General attitudes towards sponsorship among these fans are also largely wary.
When it comes to football, there are clear variances depending on market. For example, while a third of British football fans say they notice the sponsors of sporting events (34%), this rises to 44% of Germans and half of Americans (51%). These divergences are reflected in whether these groups would buy from a particular sponsor: while 44% of American soccer fans say they like to support their teams by buying products from sponsors, this falls to just a quarter of Germans (24%) and a fifth of Brits (22%).
Where fans of football in all three markets are united is that they feel that sometimes the brands that sponsor sports don’t make sense: two-thirds of Americans (67%), Germans (64%), and Britons (66%) often find these commercial arrangements incongruous. That presents a real risk to cryptocurrency providers, and it’s one they may well be aware of: Southampton FC, for example, recently teamed up with a crypto education non-profit that is designed to explain the purported benefits of cryptocurrency.
It’s a similar story with motorsport fans: Americans are more likely to support their teams by buying products from sponsors – while Germans and Britons are more hesitant – and followers of the sport in all three countries often find that the brands that sponsor sports don’t necessarily make sense. So cryptocurrency providers – who have a product that fans don’t fully understand – who team up with football or F1 teams have to tell fans what their product is, and they have to make sure this product is aligned with the teams they’re sponsoring. Judging from the data, they have a considerable task ahead of them.
Methodology
YouGov Profiles is based on continuously collected data and rolling surveys, rather than from a single limited questionnaire. Profiles data is nationally representative and weighted by age, gender, education, region, and race. Learn more about Profiles.
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