by Lydia Ludmila 
After last week’s Slice covered the expansion of the existing sports deal between crypto exchange OKX and powerhouse footy club Manchester City, we’ve got more in our weekly dose of action with major football clubs and blockchain businesses.
Let’s dive into all of the major headlines in the sports and crypto landscape from last week.
The Sports Slice
WhaleFin Shells Out $42M For Deal With Atletico Madrid
Move aside, Manchester City. It’s Spanish club Atletico Madrid dominating the sports sponsorship and crypto chatter this past week, as they secured WhaleFin as their newest kit sponsor. Man City was the featured story of last weekend’s Sports Slice report, bucking the trend of sport sponsorships with crypto firms that had gone from high-flying, to simmering down; Man City’s deal with exchange OKX was expanded to include training kits, albeit with undisclosed financial implications.
Meanwhile, for Atletico, the club country’s top flight league LaLiga, is no stranger to Sports Slice appearances, as they league has been working on an NFT marketplace with Dapper Labs for a product that is the Spanish soccer equivalent of basketball’s Top Shot or football’s All Day – both Dapper Labs produced.
WAGMI United Looks To Give Fans A Voice
We’ve covered the saga of WAGMI United, the recently budding League Two (but aspiring Premier League) club that underwent acquisition and rebranding from it’s former Crawley Town identity, for some time now in The Sports Slice. We’re back with more this week, too.
A new report from BBC Sport covers how Crawley Town is taking running the case study of DAO model features in sports clubs. The club rolled out NFTs earlier in the month priced at 0.35 ETH, and have sold roughly 10,000 of the “virtual season tickets.” After starting the season with a couple of draws, the club has allowed season ticket holders and NFT holders to vote on whether the team to shift their focus to strengthen their attack, midfield, or defense.
Unique touchpoints for fans will often dominate the excitement nearly as much as performance on the field of play, and WAGMI United is looking to turn and burn on both sides of that coin to bring something especially unique to the game of soccer.
It’s still a long road left to travel for fan tokens for sports clubs, including Spanish club Atletico Madrid and their token, ATM. That hasn’t slowed down the club’s crypto enthusiasm, however, as Atletico signed on WhaleFin as a major shirt sponsor this past week.
A New Token’s Impact On Women’s F1 League
NFTs have been proving to be a major leverage point across a variety of sports, both traditional stick-and-ball and non-traditional sports alike.
The young W-Series Racing League is a single-seat, all-female racing league consisting of 18 drivers. CortDAO, or ‘Community Owned Racing Team DAO,’ aims to bring decentralization to the W-Series and recently launched a new NFT and aims to bring equity to F1 at a time when the sport is booming. An interview with Philippine outlet PhilStar.com outlines the DAO’s perspective.
Racing at large has been particularly warm and welcome to crypto deals, and as the sport grows so too should the sponsorship deals within it.
Another Sports Perspective From The Voyager Downfall
We’ve took some time to look at the potential sponsorship implications between failed crypto platforms and projects and sports clubs and leagues, but Fortune took the time this past week to look at another angle – the players who were eligible for bonuses via these platforms and the pro club employees who were entitled to funds that are now inaccessible.
As Voyager sails it’s ship into bankruptcy proceedings, it’s unknown what remains of user funds when the dust settles. It’s a friendly reminder that many users were onboarded through partnerships like these, and that many will be left with inevitable bad taste in their mouth following these sorts of experiences.
Voyager has joined the likes of CeFi headliners, such as BlockFi and Celsius, to face incredible headwinds over the bear market conditions throughout the last few months. BlockFi is on the verge of a likely acquisition from FTX, but under conditions that will leave venture capital investors taking a major hit, and Celsius is in the same boat as Voyager – filing for bankruptcy – except carrying with it a potential $1B ‘hole’ in it’s balance sheet.
