OKX Expands Manchester City Soccer Sponsorship With $70 Million Deal

By Andrew Cohen

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has expanded its partnership with English Premier League soccer club Manchester City to become the team’s official sleeve sponsor.

The new multi-year deal will see OKX pay Manchester City more than $70 million over the course of the three-year alliance, according to a report from Forbes. OKX’s branding will appear on the left sleeve of both the men’s and women’s first-team playing jerseys. 

OKX became the official cryptocurrency partner of Manchester City in March 2022, and then expanded the deal months later to sponsor the team’s training kits. Manchester City is coming off a historic “treble” in which it won three main championships this past season: the Premier League, FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League.

Manchester City’s revenue reached $780 million this past season—the most of any soccer team worldwide. The club has the most valuable brand of any soccer team in the world at an estimated $1.6 billion, according to Brand Finance. 

“Our Manchester City partnership is intended to help the world learn more about blockchain and its use cases, including what we can do with our partnership to go beyond fan tokens,” OKX CMO Haider Rafique said in an email to Decrypt. “We believe Web3 infrastructure allows fans to have more transparency and ownership and interact with their favorite players in a new way.”

OKX recently launched a free-to-mint NFT to celebrate Manchester City's UEFA Champions League win, and also launched an OKX Collective metaverse experience featuring team stars.

OKX is headquartered in Seychelles and it has more than 50 million users across 180 markets. However, the company’s crypto exchange is not available in the United States or Canada. The expanded Manchester City deal suggests that there's still appetite from sports clubs to engage crypto sponsors, despite the widespread impact on sponsored teams when rival exchange FTX collapsed last November.

Manchester City players Jack Grealish and Alex Greenwood additionally serve as ambassadors for OKX. The company’s other sponsorships in sports include its deal with Formula One’s McLaren Racing and LIV Golf team Majestics GC.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify the terms of the deal.

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