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Hi all, Julie here.

While fintech companies advertising in sports isn't new, I feel like 2020 and 2021 is when this trend really started to take off. In June and September of this year in particular we've seen several announcements for stadium or jersey sponsorships (especially in crypto). One of my last meetings before the world shut down in March 2020 was with Chris at Chime and it was right when the Challenger Bank had announced its deal with the Dallas Mavericks. Safe to say Chris was pretty pumped about this and loving all the airtime the company was getting for it. Obviously Chime would have grown like crazy in the months following this anyways due to Covid and the great online shift of 2020, but it certainly got a good amount of brand awareness from this partnership too.

I'm curious to get thoughts on if these deals work and how marketing teams go about thinking which type of sport to sponsor and which teams. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the cost of each team and the regions that the startups are trying to reach, but LA isn't cheap and has seen by far the most deals (highly desirable audience). Anyways, I'd love your thoughts on this! In the meantime, I've made a list of all the deals that myself and the FTT Slack Community could remember. Let me know who I'm missing :)

Timeline of Deals and Announcements

November 2017: Charlotte Hornets and LendingTree for $???

October 2018: Phoenix Suns and PayPal for $???

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​September 2019: LA Clippers and Honey for $???

September 2019: LA Stadium and SoFi for ~$400M

January 2020: Dallas Mavericks and Chime for $???

March 2021: Miami Heat and FTX for $135M

April 2021: F1 and Fantom Blockchain for $???

June 2021: McLaren Racing and Tezos for $???

June 2021: F1 and Crypto.com for $???

July 2021: Portland Trail Blazers and StormX for $???

July 2021: Houston Rockets and Credit Karma for $???

September 2021: Sixers and Crypto.com for $???

September 2021: Brooklyn Nets and Webull for $30M/year

September 2021: LA Clippers and Intuit for ($500M) and Aspiration for ($300M-400M)

That's....a lot. And I certainly expect there to be loads more.

Julie VerHage-Greenberg is the co-founder of Fintech Today, where she focuses on editorial content and brand. Prior to joining, she was Bloomberg’s first fintech reporter, covering Robinhood from before it was a billion dollar company, breaking the news that Plaid was acquiring Quovo, and interviewing executives on Bloomberg TV and at several large conferences.