Dogecoin (DOGE) will serve as the shirt sleeve sponsor for Premier League football team Watford F.C. during the 2021/22 season.
Reports indicate that the deal will be worth around ?700,000. It came about as a result of a collaboration with Watford’s main shirt sponsor, Stake.com.
DOGE has taken over the role that bitcoin (BTC) previously occupied. Watford F.C. players sported BTC logos on their shirt sleeves during the Premier League 2019/20 season, as part of a sponsorship deal with Sportsbet.io. According to reports, this deal was worth ?1 million. Watford was relegated during this season, but were promoted back to the Premier League in 2021.
Football embraces crypto
Like many other realms of entertainment, the sport world has taken crypto in its stride, and football is no exception. In 2021 alone, there have been various examples of clubs with fan tokens; legends in the game have released NFT collections; even instances of players getting purchased with crypto.
DOGE’s sponsorship of Watford is also hardly the first example of such a deal. And the partnerships have not only been rooted around individual clubs, but entire championships. Back in May, CRYPTO.COM revealed that they had become an official sponsor for the Italian Lega Serie A. They launched their partnership with the Italian football league by sponsoring the Coppa Italia final on May 19 between Atalanta and Juventus. The platform has since formed other sporting deals outside of football, including Formula One and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
DOGE’s 2021 rise and fall
In the earlier part of the year, the meme-inspired altcoin DOGE demonstrated serious growth. Growth that culminated in an all-time high of $0.74 in May. The social media activities of high-profile figures such as Elon Musk and Mark Cuban contributed to this. After that ATH, the token suffered something of a fall from grace, tumbling down to $0.38 in a matter of days and failing to gain any similar ground since.
All the same, analysis has indicated that DOGE has benefited from recent market conditions. At the time of writing, DOGE was worth $0.30. It ranked as the 7th most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
