The crypto sports brand WAGMI United has acquired Crawley Town Football Club, but the “pioneering purchase” is already proving to be controversial among its fans.
They Shoot, They Score!
WAGMI United is now the first cryptocurrency company to own a football club after it announced the acquisition of the Crawley Town Football Club, based in West Sussex, England, via a press release. WAGMI – which stands for “We’re All Gonna Make It” – is a new brand that exists between the “intersection of crypto and sports”. WAGMI United last year failed in its takeover bid of another English club, Yorkshire’s Bradford City, which has aimed to rely on NFTs as an ownership model.
The group now says it wants to “empower fans to take a personal stake in telling their team’s story and shaping its future” at Crawley. Ziya Eren, the club’s chairman and owner, and chief executive Erdem Konyar are set to exit the board, with WAGMI co-founder Preston Johnson and Eben Smith taking over.
Johnson has said, “Crawley Town Football Club is a club with more than 125 years of rich history that we revere and respect. However, a conventional approach to ownership hasn’t worked and the club is losing hundreds of thousands of pounds while its fans suffer through year after year of uninspiring results on the pitch.
We’re going to shake up the status quo, try out some new ideas, and build a worldwide community of fans new and old that can be excited to cheer on the Red Devils together – stretching from West Sussex to anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
Preston Johnson, WAGMI co-founder
The pair say they want to harness the power of Web3 to expand the club’s global fanbase and open up new revenue streams, such as selling NFTs that give “fans” influence over the way the club operates.
Supporters of Crawley Town Football Club are, however, a little apprehensive and have taken to Twitter to express their reservations:
DAOs Try to Take Over Sport
This is not the first time a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) has tried to buy a sports club, though WAGMI has succeeded in its attempt. Earlier in the year, another DAO, ‘BuytheBroncos DAO’, tried to purchase US National Football League (NFL) team the Denver Broncos for US$4 billion.
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