The USWNT beat Brazil 1-0 in a chaotic friendly with eight red cards. The bigger story: zero crypto sponsors in women's soccer after Voyager's bankruptcy.
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Eight red cards in a friendly between the USWNT and Brazil made headlines. The quieter story for crypto investors: not a single digital-asset company appeared as a sponsor in that match.
The US Women's National Team beat Brazil 1-0 on June 9 in Fortaleza. Referee Paola Cebollada Lopez handed out eight red cards to Brazilian players and staff after the final whistle. Brazil collected ten yellow cards over 90 minutes. Sophia Wilson scored the winner.
For anyone tracking sports sponsorships, the absence of crypto logos on the shirts and signage was a return to pre-2021 normal. From 2021 through mid-2022, crypto exchanges and lenders spent heavily on women's soccer. Voyager Digital had a sponsorship deal with the National Women's Soccer League. FTX plastered its name on the Miami Heat's arena. Crypto.com paid $700 million for naming rights to the former Staples Center.
Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2022. The NWSL was left with unpaid commitments. That experience changed how leagues vet sponsors. Teams now demand escrow accounts or insurance bonds before signing any crypto partner, two league sources said.
The NWSL's lesson is not unique. Sports organizations across the U.S. and Europe have tightened financial-guarantee requirements for all digital asset sponsors. Apple, for example, structured its MLS streaming deal as a 10-year guaranteed cash contract, not a crypto-native arrangement with token incentives.
The 2021-2022 crypto sponsorship blitz was built on the theory that brand awareness through sports would drive retail adoption. Exchanges and lending platforms collectively spent billions on naming rights and jersey patches. When Voyager and FTX collapsed, the theory collapsed with them.
No blockchain protocol, token project, or exchange was associated with the USWNT-Brazil friendly in Fortaleza. That absence is itself a data point. It tells investors that the recovery in digital asset markets has not brought back the sponsorship spending of the last cycle.
For the NWSL, the return to pre-crypto sponsorship norms means slower revenue growth but lower counterparty risk. The league's next broadcast rights deal, expected later this year, will test whether traditional advertisers fill the gap left by crypto money.
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