Crawley Town: England’s first crypto football club

Crawley Town: England’s first crypto football club

Cryptocurrencies and crypto culture are becoming more and more prevalent in everyday British society and there is perhaps no better example of this than Crawley Twn FC, the first English football club to be owned and financed by crypto.

Preston Johnson and Eben Smith became owners of the League 2 club in 2022, purchasing the Sussex side with a fortune they had made in cryptocurrency. The club, which was founded in 1986 and plays its home games at Broadfield Stadium, is regularly watched by around 2,000 local fans and is enjoying a lengthy spell in the Football League having won promotion from the 5th tier of English football in 2011.

Crawley Town made national headlines in the FA Cup in recent years, too, facing the might of Premier League giants Manchester United in the 5th round at Old Trafford. Still playing non-league football at the time, it was one of the greatest achievements in the history of the club as they fell to a narrow loss against Sir Alex Ferguson’s side.

Despite being in one of the most successful periods of its history, Crawley Town is still a small club, making the interest of cryptocurrency users and the Web3 community a huge news story for the club and the town. The duo of Preston Johnson and Eben Smith are the founders of Wagmi United, a blockchain community that has various members who are all big players in the cryptocurrency game.

Wagmi United have ambitions to take Crawley all the way to the Premier League and such ambition will always have the chance of winning over the club’s fans. Although Crawley Town is the first club to be owned by major blockchain businessmen, this is not the first time we have seen the presenece of Bitcoin and NFTs in the sport or in British culture as a whole.

Crypto culture elsewhere

The use of the likes of Bitcoin, BNB, Ether and USD Coin is becoming more and more normalised. Additionally, Football clubs up and down the English football pyramid have offered fans NFTs related to their club, providing exclusive content for their supporters looking to get closer to the action and own a piece of unique content different from your standard match day programme, replica shirt or scarf.

Elsewhere, the rise of online casinos has effortlessly included cryptocurrencies, bringing the modern, trustworthy method of paying into gambling in a really natural way. There are hundreds and thousands of online casinos that accept cryptocurrency in 2023 and you can find some of the best ones in this list of crypto casinos.

Whether it’s inside a football boardroom, negotiating a fee for a new star striker to move clubs, or being used by someone having a flutter on an online slot game, we are seeing cryptocurrency and blockchain technology being integrated into everyday life. Just like the fans of Crawley Town Football Club, nestling into their seats on a Saturday afternoon, it will be interesting to see how all these new developments play out in front of us.

 

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