Bradford City receives purchase offer from US crypto investors
Bradford City has reportedly received an offer to purchase the League Two club from a group of US crypto investors.
A group of investors known as WAGMI United told the Washington Post that it was in the “advanced stages” of buying up an English Football League club. If the sale were to progress the investors are believed to be the first group to buy a major sports franchise using cryptocurrency as a major funding source the Washington Post said.
WAGMI group have also disclosed that they want to use NFTs, a digital piece of data proving ownership which is stored on the blockchain, to create a new model of sports club ownership.
In comments today Bradford chairman Stephen Rupp confirmed that it had received an offer, but downplayed how far along proceedings are.
“Despite various reports claiming a change of ownership is imminent, I can confirm it is not,” Rupp said.
“Yesterday, I received an email from a representative of the WAGMI United group with an offer to purchase Bradford City AFC,” he added. “That is all I have received, nothing more, and no further action has taken place.”
Synergies between crypto, NFTs and sport have been on the rise in recent months.
Major football clubs including Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City have launched crypto fan tokens. Meanwhile, Germany’s football league the Budnesliga and Spain’s La Liga have both formed partnerships with the NFT platform Sorare which creates NFT football cards of players for an online fantasy football game.
Read more: NFT platform Sorare announces partnership with Germany’s Bundesliga