Manchester United's Web3 game on Tezos could revolutionize fan engagement and digital collectibles in sports, enhancing interactive experiences.
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Other Manchester United-related assets also rallied after Musk's tweet, as well as Manchester City's fan token.
Manchester United Fan Token (MUFC) is a dead coin and not related to the sports franchise, but one Elon Musk tweet was enough to revive it on Aug. 17.
Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2022
To clarify, MUFC is not an official Manchester United crypto token. It came to life in August 2021 after a team of programmers, who are said to be hardcore Manchester United fans, falsely claimed that holding MUFC would give buye influence on the football club's decisions.
The team later conducted an "airdrop" round of 10,000,000,000 MUFC in November 2021, promising to provide 10,000 MUFC to users who followed its official social media handles. The prospects of getting free MUFC tokens helped its price rally to as high as $1.
But the project turned out to be vaporware, eventually leading MUFC down by 100% after November. It was deemed extinct until a tweet from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Aug. 17 revived it from oblivion.
The Tesla CEO tweeted that he would buy the Manchester United football club, which he later admitted was a "long-running joke."
No, this is a long-running joke on Twitter. I’m not buying any sports teams.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2022
Nonetheless, the message sent the financial assets related to Manchester United soaring, including its stock MANU, which rose 1.97% in pre-market trading, and Tezos (XTZ), the club's official blockchain and training partner, whose market valuation surged by $138.85 million.
Even Manchester City's official crypto token, CITY, popped higher by nearly 14% to reach $7 per piece after Musk's tweet, despite Manchester City being a different football club.
On the other hand, MUFC surged by over 3,000% hours after Musk's tweet about buying Manchester United, according to data fetched by CoinPaprika.com.
However, the MUFC rally appears to be price manipulation due to extremely poor liquidity and volume.
Notably, in the last 24 hours, MUFC had been trading only against two crypto assets: WBNB and USDT. While the liquidity for the WBNB/MUFC pair was mere $106.84, it was even lower for the USDT/MUFC pair at around $10, according to data from PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange.
Meanwhile, the net volume that backed MUFC's 3,000% rally was approximately $39,000 in the last 24 hours, suggesting fewer traders behind the major upside move.
Thus, a small number of speculators likely used MUFC's poor liquidity to artificially pump the token. The number of traders who bought the false upside narrative remains unclear, but given thatMUFC has already dropped by 50% from its local top, the prospect that its rate would return to zero is high.
Related: Crypto scams fall 65% after gullible noobs exit the market: Chainalysis
Meanwhile, the incident reasserts Musk's strong influence on the crypto market, especially on memecoins like Dogecoin.
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Following Manchester United's partnership with blockchain firm Tezos almost one month ago, Manchester City's foray in the space having partnered with crypto exchange OKX provides new competition in vie for technological prominence.
Leading English football club Manchester City have announced an inaugural cryptocurrency exchange partnership with OKX across both its men’s and women’s teams, as well as the clubs emerging e-sports ventures.
According to the club’s press release, the collaboration will focus on “exclusive experiences for OKX’s global customer base, in addition to an in-stadium presence across the Etihad Stadium and Academy Stadium.”
Rebranded from OKEx in mid-January this year, OKX — a Seychelles-based corporation with reportedly over 20 million customers — is the second largest spot exchange in the industry, facilitating over $4.3 billion in normalized trading volume over the past twenty-four hours. This total places them ahead Coinbase in third at approximately $3.3 billion, but someway behind Binance’s dominance at the top of the table with over $16.2 billion.
CEO of OKX, Jay Hao, noted that "Manchester City is a Club that represents the effect football has to make a positive difference in people’s lives, to bring people together around a shared love of the beautiful game."
Welcome to @okx, Official Cryptocurrency Partner of Manchester City.
— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 4, 2022
Game On!
Related: Penalties and extra time: The scoreboard for soccer club crypto deals
Amid an ever-present rivalry, and fierce jostle for bragging rights in the city of Manchester — especially in light of the upcoming derby match this Sunday — both club’s commercial sides are taking considerable strides in the digital asset space, respectively scoring lucrative deals with industry firms, and racing to expand their influence in the Web3 sphere.
Manchester United preceded their counterparts after teaming up with blockchain firm Tezos in early February to become their new official training kit and technology partner, including plans to enter the metaverse, tokenomic, and nonfungible token, or NFT, collectible space.
In April 2021, Forbes published the latest statistics ranking the world's most valuable football clubs. While Spanish-giants Barcelona and Real Madrid took the top spots, Manchester United came in fourth with a value of $4.2 billion and a revenue across 2020 of $643 million. Meanwhile, Manchester City came in sixth place at $4 billion and $609 million, respectively.
Similarly, fellow Premier League North-London based club, Arsenal attempted to enter the fan-token market, only to be halted in their endeavours by Advertising Standards Authority, or ASA, for breaching rules, and according to the regulatory body: “irresponsibly taking advantage of consumers’ inexperience and for failing to illustrate the risk of the investment.”
Tezos blockchain has reportedly agreed to a training kit sponsorship with Manchester United in a deal that will see the latter receive over $27 million per year. This deal adds to Tezos’ growing list of sports teams it has sponsored since May 2021. Tezos’ Investment in Sports The most successful football club in the English […]
EPL giant, Manchester United is set to announce a partnership with blockchain platform, Tezos, and Baby Doge has struck a deal with a German professional football team to develop NFTs.
Manchester United, one of the world’s most popular soccer (or football) teams is reportedly set to announce a multi-year training kit sponsorship by Proof-of-Stake blockchain platform, Tezos.
First reported by The Athletic, the deal is apparently in excess of $27 million per year, allowing Tezos to place its logo on the team's training uniform. Manchester United have reportedly finalized filming promotional material ahead of the official announcement.
The report also speculates that the partnership may involve collaboration in the technology space, such as a Metaverse or other Web3 project.
Tezos has made heavy investment into sports sponsorships. In May 2021, RedBull racing announced Tezos as its official blockchain partner. Tezos to build its first NFT fan experience which was launched in November later that year.
A similar announcement by McLaren Racing a month later saw Tezos as its Official Technical Partner in a multi-year deal across its Formula 1, INDYCAR and esports teams, and the Tezos network was used in the launch of McLarens NFT collection in October 2021.
Manchester United is in the top tier of pro-English football dubbed the English Premier League (EPL). It joins several other EPL clubs who have either penned sponsorship deals or fan token partnerships.
In August 2021, Dogecoin partnered with Watford FC as its shirt sleeve sponsor for the 2021-22 season, with players sporting the coins’ famed meme logo on their arm. Manchester City, Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers FC have all launched fan tokens on various platforms such as Socios and Bitci.
Meanwhile Doge and Shiba Inu inspired meme coin, Baby Doge Coin ($BABYDOGE), has announced it has partnered with professional football club, TSG Hoffenheim, a team in the Bundesliga, Germany’s top football league.
In an annoucement Hoffenheim confirmed that Baby Doge will become an official partner of the club, working together on the development of club-specific NFTs. The deal also includes what the club calls “key promotional materials” which will see Baby Doge advertised on LED boards around the pitch at the team's home games, as well as co-branded content.
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"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, Hoffenheim's CEO.
Mike Watson, Project Manager for Baby Doge, stated that the deal would expand its presence in the global market and in the European Union and it would continue to form strategic partnerships to extend its reach as a community-centred project by establishing itself as a player in the sports world.
A similar canine based meme coin, Floki Inu, which was created after Elon Musk tweeted he was naming his Shiba Inu “Floki”, also scored a partnership deal with Italian professional football club, S.S.C Napoli in November 2021.
The deal saw Floki Inu’s logo — a cartoon Shiba Inu wearing a viking helmet — displayed on the backside of Napoli players’ jerseys and, similar to Baby Doge's deal, saw Floki Inu’s logo displayed on LED signs at the Napoli home stadium.
