Gibraltar Football Club To Pay Players In Cryptocurrency

Announcements, News | July 30, 2018 By:

Football team Gibraltar United has announced that all player contracts will include payment agreements in cryptocurrency starting next season.

Founded in 1943 in the midst of World War Two, Gibraltar United plays in the Gibraltar Football League’s Premier Division, which was certified by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) in 2013. Between 2011 and 2014 it joined forces with the Lions Football Club, and re-branded to Lions Gibraltar FC, but the teams split in 2014 and Gibraltar United was reborn.

In April 2017, the club entered partnerships with Turicum Bank and former Real Madrid defender Michel Salgado, with the latter becoming one of the new owners of the club along with Dubai-based businessman Pablo Dana. Dana is an investor in a company called Quantocoin, a platform designed to provide cryptocurrencies for everyday uses.

In January of this year, Heritage Sports Holdings, one of Gibraltar United’s shareholders, partnered with Quantocoin to allow players, fans and Heritage employees to use Quantocoin’s services. The deal also enables Heritage Sports Holdings to use cryptocurrency to purchase players.

Dana said that by adopting this method of payment, they aim to inspire others to do the same, which could help stamp out financial corruption in the sport. He also said that it has given his team the ability to pay foreign players who are unable to easily set up a bank account in Gibraltar.

In January of this year, a regulatory framework for companies using blockchain went into effect in Gibraltar. The government is also set to launch a legal framework for initial coin offerings (ICO). The regulations are aimed at bringing transparency and legitimacy to crypto trading.

“Gibraltar was the first [place that] regulated betting companies 20 years back, when everyone was seeing them as horrible,” Dana said. “They put compliance and anti-money laundering regulations and created a platform – they have the intelligence to do the same with cryptocurrencies.”

Other football teams have also embraced cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In January, English football club Arsenal signed a sponsorship deal with crypto gambling platform CashBet Coin, becoming the first major football club to do so. During the same month, Harunustaspor, a Turkish amateur football team, completed the world’s first football transfer using bitcoin.