June 2021 saw the announcement of a $100 million branding deal between Formula One and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, along with being named the official cryptocurrency and NFT partner of Formula One.
Just a few months later, Formula One team Mercedes announced its partnership with global cryptocurrency firm FTX, giving them access to drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. In June, FTX also signed a deal with Major League Baseball worth $18 billion.
Clearly, cryptocurrency projects represent billions of dollars in marketing spend, but it may seem strange that so many of them are primarily using these big sponsorships as their main form of marketing.
Up until now, crypto companies were severely limited in the marketing channels that were available to them, but with Facebook recently lifting its ban on cryptocurrency ads, all of this is set to change. So why has Facebook been reluctant to allow crypto ads to run on its site, and what have the motivations been for the lift in these restrictions?
Scaling back restrictions on crypto ads
Facebook’s initial…
