They want to show that the nouveau-riche blockchain elite can be good stewards of a community institution. But like the rest of the industry, they’ve seen their extravagant ambitions collide with reality.
Preston Johnson, a soft-spoken cryptocurrency millionaire with a long, bushy, brown beard, leaned forward in his seat, fists clenched, surveying his empire. He wasn’t perched on a mega-yacht or enjoying any of the other ostentatious perks of crypto wealth. The setting was humbler: a small soccer stadium in a town about 30 miles south of London, where the lowest-ranked team in England’s professional leagues was battling for survival.
Crawley fans were instinctively suspicious of the Americans. But Johnson and his fellow investors soon earned some goodwill: Over the summer, they raised $4.8 million from the sale of a line of soccer-themed NFTs, the unique digital collectibles that exploded in popularity last year. The owners used the proceeds — which amounted to about seven times the club’s revenue last season — to invest aggressively in the team, hiring video analysts and recruiting a star striker.
The Crawley investment is also an act of reputational cleansing. The great crypto crash of 2022 was partly a failure of ambition, as companies that had overextended themselves, convinced that the good times would keep rolling, suddenly lost it all. Crawley’s new owners crave respectability. A large industrial town near Gatwick Airport, Crawley is not an athletic powerhouse; in an interview, one member of the WAGMI project described the area as “the kind of Newark, New Jersey, of England.” But the local club was available at a relatively affordable price of between 4 million and 5 million pounds — about a third of what WAGMI had raised.
The bar was low. WAGMI bought the club from a Turkish steel magnate who rarely interacted with fans. A previous owner, Mohammed Azwar Majeed, was imprisoned for tax fraud. Perhaps with that history in mind, some fans are concerned that the out-of-town crypto investors will disappear as fast as they arrived. “My fear is these guys will get bored with it,” said Peter Frake, who runs a local security business that used to sponsor the team’s jerseys.
Francomb’s fascination with crypto long predates the WAGMI takeover. But even since Crawley became a crypto brand, his efforts to proselytize in the locker room have had mixed results. Nichols, the team’s striker, said he once spent roughly $600 on an NFT depicting a cartoon ape with a white headband. The image’s value eventually plummeted to about $20. “A recommendation from George,” he recalled with a grimace.
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