Sports affiliations are highly regarded through luxury brands and with Olympic fever in full swing, sports heroes are the new bedfellows of luxury.
As a premium partner of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, LVMH has recruited athlete ambassadors both at the point of organization and within houses such as Dior and Louis Vuitton.
The luxury organization also unveiled the immersive and gamified 3D platform The Maison of All Victories with Paris-based studio Cosmic Shelter to showcase the multifaceted nature of its photographs, videos and 3D models partnering with ambassadors who share inspiration, writing and social media. updates as the games were developed.
These are immersive reports that make the visitor feel part of the action instead of just sitting on the sidelines. Technology facilitates this closeness and can also give sports enthusiasts greater access and opportunities to express their fandom.
According to Rachel Conlan, global chief marketing officer at Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, “blockchain is the next-level way to create deeper interactions, and in the end, fans delight beyond what’s happening in the stadium or on the track. “net.
Since 2022, Binance has partnered with Cristiano Ronaldo, arguably the Pharrell Williams of football, on a series of NFT drops aimed at achieving this.
The collection is connected to various cities that have been vital to the football star’s career, each with a different story. The tokens come with perks like art posters and vintage jerseys, sports tickets, and even the chance to play with Ronaldo at a special education festival in Portugal.
Some tokens were awarded to special content: a lie detector that checked a series of questions to see if Ronaldo’s answers were true or an exercise in diplomacy.
There is also a gamified collect-to-earn mechanic through which multi-token holders can enter a raffle to win a trip to Riyadh to watch one of the matches.
While a special limited-edition auction on Sunday started at $777, virtual collectibles charge $35.
“The goal,” Conlan explains, “is to give other people other rewards and incentives that they would never receive in a classic gift. You have to make sure that there are genuine benefits and utility. “
Conlan has been a marketing professional for about twenty years. Prior to accepting the Binance position in 2023, he spent five years overseeing global logo partnerships for the sports department of the entertainment leader Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he helped attach IPs such as Formula 1 and like McLaren with major airline logos and fashion technology.
Thanks to CAA, it began operating in the fintech and cryptocurrency sector, attracted by the latter’s promise of monetary democratization. Hence its move to Binance just over a year ago.
“I think there’s a very natural combination,” he says. The crypto network has an incredible passion for the virtual asset debate and we are also seeing that sports enthusiasts are incredibly engaged and excited about their teams. So I think there’s already a natural synergy. “
Sports and entertainment provide a platform to introduce crypto to other people, he adds, “which is not just about capacity and price proposition, but in a much more emotional way based on storytelling and shared pricing and an opportunity to set the cultural agenda. “
In addition to engagement and storytelling, another domain is fan tokens, which allow enthusiasts to vote on club decisions, as well as memorabilia and price verification.
“Blockchain generation can optimize the entire purchasing procedure within sports clubs. It’s a practical solution to the black market for tickets, which is a major challenge in the world of sports,” he says, noting that such authentication only applies to sport. for instance, the LVMH-backed consortium Aura Blockchain recently announced that OTB would use its blockchain generation to provide its consumers with a virtual certificate of authenticity for all of its luxury brands’ products.
Conlan’s role at Binance also has a mission of advocacy and education: to promote the broader benefits of cryptocurrencies and work to replace public perceptions. For example, it works with the government of Kazakhstan through a crypto university for which Binance is helping to set the agenda. .
Its platform’s partnership with Farfetch is further proof of this. The luxury fashion marketplace introduced Binance Pay, its crypto payment system powered by Binance, in 2022. The fashion and sports industries, he says, are sometimes early adopters of emerging technologies because they want to “anticipate what their consumers want. “
Conlan shows that Farfetch saw a 20% increase in crypto banknotes between the third and fourth quarters of 2023 and a 57% increase in transaction volumes in the first quarter of 2024. “It just shows the opportunity and potential of those genuine or public services of genuine life. Experiences that other people would possibly have with cryptocurrencies,” he says.
While Binance surpassed the 200 million user milestone last weekend, it notes that cryptocurrency is “still as nascent as an industry,” still only 10%. “Partnerships like Farfetch are key to expanding penetration. “