Britain’s advertising watchdog has banned two Arsenal Football Club ads over its crypto-based fan token scheme, saying they were misleading fans about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency.
The Advertising Standards Authority said the club did not make it clear that the value of token investments could go up or down, or that crypto assets were not regulated.
The ruling was the ASA’s second against Arsenal after the club appealed against an earlier decision last year.
Arsenal’s fan token scheme allows fans to buy a non-fungible token through the company NFT Socios, giving them voting rights on club decisions in exchange for a token they have to buy with the cryptocurrency Chiliz.
But the ASA’s ruling upheld the watchdog’s earlier ruling that the ads, one on Arsenal’s website and one on Facebook, were misleading.
He said the ads “trivialized crypto-asset investing and took advantage of consumers’ inexperience or gullibility” by failing to include risk warnings about crypto as an investment class.
Financial News have approached Arsenal for comment.
Crypto has taken the football world by storm in recent years, with Premier League clubs such as Manchester City and Wolves announcing major shirt sponsor partnerships with OKX and Astropay respectively.
Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo also dipped his toes into the world of crypto in June despite the crisis rocking the industry, signing a sponsorship deal with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. The Football Association is looking for partners for non-fungible token projects for their national teams.
TO READ The likes of Revolut, Fidelity and Binance are looking to capitalize on the crypto crack
Meanwhile, fan token schemes have proven a particularly thorny issue, with clubs selling NFTs for images of famous sporting moments to fans in exchange for cryptocurrency.
But with the value of crypto assets and tokens crashing spectacularly in May and June, many ordinary retail investors have been left with huge losses.
The ASA initially banned the posts on Arsenal’s website and Facebook page in late 2021, when it said the club had misled fans “about the risk of investment and failed to make clear that the ‘ token’ was a crypto asset.”
Arsenal Supporters Trust boss Tim Payton told The Times last year that football clubs should have a “greater duty of care responsibility towards their fans” and suggested that cryptocurrencies should be more heavily regulated.
Susannah Streeter, analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the ruling “highlights the need to accelerate the plan to give the Financial Conduct Authority more powers to regulate the crypto industry, given the government’s vision to make the UK a a cryptographic center”.
To contact the author of this story with comments or news, email Alex Daniel
[ad_2]
Source link
