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FC Barcelona has come under fire after agreeing a sponsorship with a little-known crypto start-up registered in Samoa, in a deal that critics argue underscores the club’s desperation to raise new revenue and potentially exposes its fans to financial risks.
The heavily indebted Catalan club this month announced a three-year deal with Zero-Knowledge Proof, which will become Barcelona’s official blockchain technology partner.
ZKP announced the sponsorship deal with one of the world’s pre-eminent sports teams in its first post on X. Its account had only dozens of followers at the time.
The start-up is named after a cryptographic concept in which a person can prove they possess certain information, or have sufficient funds to make a payment, without revealing any personal data. ZKP held its first auction of 200mn zero knowledge proof coins on Thursday.
While ZKP’s website professes a commitment to transparency, it offers scant detail on who is running the company, or who provided the $100mn financing it claims to have received. Its terms of service are governed by the laws of Samoa.
“Everyone asks, “Who’s behind this?” the company says on its website. “As if knowing the names would make the code stronger. It won’t. We’re real — engineers, cryptographers, ex-founders, system killers. But we’re not playing the PR game.”
ZKP did not respond to requests for comment.
Martin Calladine, author of No Questions Asked: How football joined the crypto con, said the dearth of information on ZKP was “deeply concerning” and its tie-up with Barcelona harks back to some of the most egregious sponsorship deals between football clubs and dubious crypto firms.
Calladine added Barcelona fans could be lured into buying coins that “could easily end up being worthless”. ZKP will be able to advertise its service through Barcelona’s digital channels as part of the agreement.
Hours after the Barcelona deal was announced, self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate posted a video on X encouraging his followers to embrace “zero knowledge proof privacy systems” in order to prevent their crypto holdings being accessed by tax authorities.
Tate told the Financial Times in a statement that while he was an advocate of the technology he has “zero involvement with FC Barcelona, zero interest in football, and zero desire to sponsor anything in that world.”
Tate is one of three accounts followed by ZKP’s X account, along with FC Barcelona and Bitcoin.
Former Barcelona board director Xavier Vilajoana, who plans to run against incumbent Joan Laporta for the club presidency next year, questioned what due diligence the club had done before signing the deal with ZKP.
Vilajoana warned that partnering with an embryonic and secretive crypto start-up was a sign that “desperation” was shaping decision-making at the financially stricken club.
“It is incredibly concerning that Barca’s leadership would choose to associate the club with a company whose background raises so many red flags,” he said.
Barcelona did not respond to questions over the ZKP deal from the Financial Times, but pointed to a statement published on Wednesday distancing itself from ZKP’s coin auction.
The Catalan club said it had “no connection whatsoever” to ZKP’s token, had “no responsibility” for its issuance, and did not use “the associated technology”.
A previous version of ZKP’s terms of service gave its legal name as Braxova Ltd, a Samoan business whose address is listed as being at an offshore business consultancy based in a two-storey building in the capital, Apia. The reference was subsequently removed.
ZKP says on its website it has no base as it is “a decentralised project” with contributors across multiple jurisdictions.
In a press release announcing the Barcelona deal, ZKP included quotes from Jeff Wilck, described as its head of blockchain. The Financial Times was unable to find further details about Wilck, whose name is similar to that of Jeffrey Wilcke, a co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain. Wilcke did not respond to a request for comment over LinkedIn.
The ZKP deal comes at a time when Barcelona is under severe financial pressure, after embarking on an ill-judged player-buying spree between 2017 and 2019.
The club has been punished repeatedly for breaching Spanish football’s spending limit and forced to offload star players. Its latest accounts showed net debt of €469mn plus more than €900mn of stadium-related borrowing.
Barcelona has sought to improve its finances through asset sales, including a portion of its long-term television income, but costly delays to its stadium renovation have made raising revenue more pressing.
Crypto firms have rushed to sponsor football clubs in recent years but many deals have ended in acrimony. Inter Milan, Roma, Chelsea and Atlético Madrid are among the clubs that have entered into deals that ended early — in some cases the crypto groups failed to make agreed payments.
Some of Barcelona’s other efforts to cash in on nascent technologies have also gone awry.
The club booked a €141mn writedown last year after a deal to sell a stake in Barca Vision, a subsidiary set up to house “all initiatives associated to Web3, NFTs and the metaverse”, collapsed when investors failed to make payments.
Additional reporting by Chris Cook
