European football club Benfica just announced that Ethereum and Bitcoin payments will be accepted. The fans of the Primera Liga champions will be able to buy club merchandise and match tickets with cryptocurrency.
Although this is not the first time a major European football club talked about accepting cryptocurrency, it is the first time it is actually accepted as a regular payment option. Juventus, as an example, wanted to launch a club token. It was also possible to pay with Bitcoin during the Russia World Cub 2018 but this was just a one-off event.
Benfica’s sudden announcement appeared as a partnership was signed with UTRUST, which is a crypto payment processing firm that uses UTK, proprietary ETH-based token.
A press release stated:
UTRUST’s core technology will allow Benfica to take advantage of the increased security and convenience of cryptocurrency payments while protecting the club from market volatility. It will also significantly reduce processing fees and eliminate inconvenient credit-card chargebacks and fraudulent payments.
Domingos Soares de Oliveira, Benfica CEO, declared that the decision was made as the club wants to be ahead of the curve. He added:
We recognize that many of our supporters are now digital users first so we want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to accepting novel technologies.
There is no other popular industry in the world that embraced cryptocurrencies as much as European football did. We saw huge personalities like Harry Redknapp and Ronaldinho being involved. There is even a sponsorship deal that was signed between Ayr United (Scottish club) and Bitcoin SV.
Benfica has a huge history in football. The club often fills out the stadium, which has a capacity of 65,000. There are 14 million followers for the club around the world and on social media accounts there are 7 million active fans.
Through the UTRUST partnership, Ethereum, Bitcoin and UTK are going to be accepted for payments.
