Tether shocked the European sports and crypto markets with a late‑2025 bid to acquire Juventus, one of Italy’s most successful football clubs. Although the Agnelli family rejected the company’s nearly $1.2 billion offer, expectations are rising that CEO Paolo Ardoino and chairman Giancarlo Devasini will return with an improved bid.

After all, Tether already owns 10% of the club, while Ardoino and Devasini are two lifelong fans of Juventus who already expressed their desire to become more involved with the club. However, perhaps the most important factor in the ongoing saga is Tether’s immense and virtually unmatched financial strength. Tether remains an enormously profitable business that has recorded billions in annual profits, primarily generated from the interest earned on the massive reserves that back its USDT tokens.

This has left the company sitting on a pile of cash—reported to be tens of billions in excess reserves and liquid assets—which Tether executives have stated they intend to deploy for strategic growth and diversification beyond crypto operations. This combination of deep liquidity and a clear need for high-profile asset diversification almost guarantees a long, drawn-out tussle for the control of Juventus. For the Agnelli family, this protracted fight for a club that reportedly has not turned a profit in almost a decade means they face a highly motivated and virtually bottomless counterparty.

The politics for the control of the club aside, Tether’s audacious bid holds deeper significance for the crypto industry. It dramatically underlines just how far the company has evolved—moving from being frequently scrutinized and often labeled a “pariah” in earlier crypto cycles—to positioning itself as a legitimate, highly liquid Web3 leader with serious mainstream institutional ambitions.

This high-stakes move into football, however, is part of a larger, strategic pivot that exposes a growing consensus among Web3 companies: sponsoring or associating with popular global sports organizations is the most reliable, sure path to mass adoption and public trust. Unlike past crypto marketing, which often targeted niche technical audiences, this strategy leverages the inherent loyalty and massive, global viewership of sports—particularly European football and Formula 1—to achieve essential goals.

Following a well-trodden, highly effective playbook, crypto exchanges and various Web3 companies have systematically poured hundreds of millions of dollars into sports teams, particularly the globally dominant English football clubs. In exchange for massive investment, these teams prominently adorn their playing or training kits with logos or titles of the sponsoring exchanges, effectively transforming their globally televised athletes into walking billboards.

This strategy is a direct, calculated replication of the market penetration model successfully executed by mainstream global corporations decades prior. For example, it is said that the U.S.-based insurance giants AON and AIG used shirt sponsorship of Manchester United throughout the 2000s to achieve crucial brand recognition. Their success demonstrated that associating with top-tier sports clubs provides an unparalleled, instant injection of trust and legitimacy, transforming relatively niche financial services into household names across diverse, international demographics.

Today, Web3 companies are attempting to leverage the same powerful mechanism to leapfrog the typical decades-long cycle of consumer trust development. By offering unprecedentedly lucrative deals to the most popular sports franchises, they aim to achieve rapid global visibility and, crucially, a tacit endorsement from the traditional world of popular culture.

It has been said that these two insurance companies were able to penetrate Asia and Europe in part because of the popularity of Manchester United in those parts of the world. Today, Web3 companies are attempting to replicate this success by offering lucrative deals to popular sports teams. In this article, Bitcoin.com News looks back at some of the more significant partnerships established or cemented in 2025.

This has easily ranked as the most significant, both in terms of the funds involved as well as the profile of the sports team involved. Until a few years ago, Juventus dominated Italian football, winning everything on offer and was recognized as one of the big guns of European football. However, the club, which won the Italian Serie A a record 36 times, has struggled in the last few years, and its reputation has been tarnished by allegations of match-fixing. This bad patch has affected Juventus’ ability to generate revenues and turned it into a loss-making club.

The club has attempted to find ways of generating extra revenues, but these have fallen short, forcing the Agnelli family to consider raising capital by selling its shares. Tether, which sponsored the Swiss professional football club FC Lugano in 2023, has been participating in Juventus’ investment rounds, culminating in its shareholding rising to 10.12%.

However, given their personal connection to the club and billionaire status, Ardoino and Devasini appear to want more, and this was made clear in June when the Tether CEO publicly expressed frustration with what he perceived to be the limited communication between the Agnelli family’s Exor and the stablecoin issuer. Now, with the Agnelli family having thrown the gauntlet with the rejection of Tether’s offer, the stage seems set for a lengthy and public fight for the club. Whichever way this ends, the crypto industry is likely to be a big winner from this fight.

While Tether’s Juventus pursuit is by far the biggest story of the year, it was not the only one. There were several shirt or other sponsorship deals between Web3 companies and European football clubs. For example, crypto exchange Kraken added Atlético Madrid and RB Leipzig to its presence with sleeve sponsorships, while Bitpanda expanded its partnership with another Italian football powerhouse, AC Milan, to bring visibility on the back of the men’s first team’s jerseys.

Meanwhile, Binance is the sponsor of next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, a biannual football tournament featuring 24 African national football teams. Crypto.com, on the other hand, secured the naming rights for the Los Angeles multi-purpose indoor arena Staples Center.

2025 will be definitively marked as the year crypto achieved true institutional prominence within Formula 1 (F1), the premier global motor racing series. Coinbase forcefully headlined this strategic pivot to motor racing with its groundbreaking partnership with the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team. This was not merely a passive branding deal; it served as a high-profile, practical demonstration of blockchain utility, as the entire agreement was reportedly settled entirely in the stablecoin USDC. Furthermore, the partnership signals a clear future focus on deeper Web3 integration, with fan initiatives slated to be built on Ethereum’s Layer 2 network, Base, optimizing speed and reducing transaction costs for fan engagement.

The competition among exchanges for trackside visibility was fierce. Gate.io secured a major sponsorship deal with the perennial powerhouse Red Bull Racing, aligning its brand with one of the most successful F1 teams and ensuring maximum exposure across every race weekend. Meanwhile, OKX solidified its high-profile role as a primary partner of McLaren, featuring prominent branding on the car chassis and driver suits, and frequently collaborating on special edition liveries that generate significant media buzz.

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Of all these high-value arrangements, the OKX sponsorship arguably secured the most immediate returns on investment, as McLaren’s Lando Norris stunned the field to win the 2025 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. Norris claimed the title with 423 points, narrowly edging out Red Bull’s two-time champion Max Verstappen by just two points, ensuring that the OKX logo was front-and-center during the year’s most celebrated motorsport moment.

In 2024, Coinbase became the first crypto partner of a major Canadian professional sports league, sponsoring the 111th Grey Cup. This deal emphasizes innovative fan engagement through blockchain, including on-chain events and digital prizes at games. However, by June 2025, Coinbase announced a multi-year partnership with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), which owns the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts. This new deal acts as a continuation and deepening of their CFL investment, with Coinbase’s logo being featured on the Argonauts’ jersey for the 2025 and 2026 seasons, confirming the longevity of their presence in Canadian football.

Coinbase also continues its relationship with the NBA team, focusing on innovative fan engagement using blockchain technology, digital collectibles, and exclusive experiences.

As Web3 companies have demonstrated through their multi-million-dollar investments throughout 2025, the sponsorship of elite sports teams transcends mere advertising; it is a meticulously calculated, full-scale corporate reputation and global adoption strategy. These firms are not just buying billboard space; they are actively harnessing the unrivaled prestige, mass appeal, and inherent trust of traditional, long-standing athletic institutions to swiftly cement crypto’s legitimacy and dominance in the global financial and cultural landscapes.

By aligning their technology with the proven stability and passionate loyalty of major leagues and iconic teams, Web3 entities are fundamentally seeking to accelerate the mass migration of traditional finance users into the cryptoeconomy. This aggressive positioning is aimed at transforming public perception and making blockchain technology an inseparable fixture of the modern consumer experience.

• Why is Tether trying to buy Juventus? Tether wants deeper control of the club as part of its global diversification strategy.
• Why did the Agnelli family reject the offer? The Agnellis turned down Tether’s nearly $1.2 billion bid but remain under pressure due to years of losses.
• How much of Juventus does Tether already own? Tether holds just over 10% of Juventus after participating in multiple investment rounds.
• Why does this matter for the crypto industry? The bid signals crypto’s shift into mainstream global sports as a fast‑track path to trust and mass adoption.

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