Why Crypto Died in Super Bowl LVII

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By Anushree Dave

Unlike Super Bowl 2022, which has been dubbed the ‘Crypto Bowl’, this year’s football game will feature no crypto advertising

If you tuned into the Super Bowl in 2022, you would have seen Larry David in a commercial for crypto exchange FTX, in which he played a crypto skeptic who wasn’t sure the platform would ever take off. Turns out he was right.

In November, FTX filed for bankruptcy and former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest with his parents in Palo Alto, Calif., after fraud charges. But it’s not just an FTX ad that won’t air at the Super Bowl this year. No crypto advertising will be, according to an AP report published earlier this week.

Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles takes place on Sunday, and nearly 100 million people typically tune in to the National Football Championship. Ad spend is high, with some companies shelling out around $7 million for a 30-second spot.

Last year’s game was dubbed the “Crypto Bowl” after four major crypto companies – FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com and eToro – bought ad spots. At the time, crypto companies were trying to break into the mainstream. Famous FTX endorsers in 2022 included Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka and Kevin O’Leary. Bankman-Fried was considered a white knight in crypto, appearing before the US Congress to advocate for some regulation in the industry, and publicly discussing effective altruism and his philanthropic efforts in interviews.

That was until November 2022, when FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried wiped out his $16 billion fortune in less than a week.

Recently, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission cracked down on crypto exchanges. This week, Kraken was fined $30 million for failing to register the offering and selling of its crypto asset staking program as a service. In August, Coinbase was under investigation by federal regulators over crypto yield and staking products. In 2022, victims lost over $3 billion to crypto hacks and scams, and crypto lawsuits increased by 46% in 2022 according to a recent analysis by HedgeWithCrypto, a crypto research firm. cryptography.

All of this has contributed to skepticism towards the industry, with a report indicating that 72% of institutional traders have no intention of trading crypto this year.

Two crypto advertisers had booked ads and two more were going to book, Mark Evans, executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports told the AP. But once news of FTX broke, those deals weren’t done. This year, you’ll see beer ads instead, with Anheuser-Busch remaining the biggest spender.

-Anushree Dave

(END) Dow Jones Newswire

02-11-23 1031ET

Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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