Cryptocurrencies and the blockchain are slowly taking over the world and with good reason. Decentralized currencies allow for privacy to be restored to the masses and now a recent movement has seen cryptocurrency providers (such as Coinbase) partner with esports teams and online gaming companies (like Bitcasino) partnering with cryptocurrencies, or cryptocurrency providers such as Coinbase, in order to jump on board the current momentum behind the market. Let’s dive in!
Evil Geniuses partner with Coinbase, Inc.
The most significant partnership between esports and cryptocurrency was that of Evil Geniuses and Coinbase. Evil Geniuses are a world-renowned, and multiple major-winning esports team that operate over a number of different games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 to name a few.
Why did Coinbase and Evil Geniuses Partner?
There was a large amount of speculation floating around about a major pay-out from Coinbase to Evil Geniuses, however the main reasons were identified as education and pushing forward a future model of economy.
Coinbase along with EG had partnered to educate its fans on cryptocurrency, including the risks and rewards along with the technologies behind the platforms in an effort to educate the people who will likely be using this in the future for their main source of transaction.
After the partnership, Coinbase integrated a “Give Evil” holiday charity initiative that will feature the company’s logo (Coinbase) into the jerseys on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team, as well as the Dota 2 team.
Why will services like Coinbase want to delve into esports?
There’s an argument to say that companies like Coinbase, Kraken, and Binance should be all over esports. Although esports has had a rough time with gambling issues, or ‘risk to reward’ issues throughout many games – esports is an untapped and highly-potential market for cryptocurrency.
The age range for esports ranges from 13-26 which is a wide range, and a perfect age range for cryptocurrency companies such as Coinbase. Not only this, but most people who watch esports have a love for technology or gaming, which again contributes to the market potential that Coinbase capitalized on.
Why will this partnership pave the way for future partnerships within the esports industry?
It’s hard to say that these partnerships will continue to thrive and esports and crypto services will naturally fit moving forwards. From what we know, cryptocurrency as an industry shows no signs of slowing down, and esports are in a similar scenario with majors bigger than ever before.
This partnership likely had a lot of money involved behind it, but it shows that esports and cryptocurrencies are being recognized like never before, as two large providers (Coinbase for crypto and Evil Geniuses for esports) of service can come together and build themselves to be better in the respective industries.
What does the future hold for esports x cryptocurrency?
As we mentioned above, both esports and cryptocurrency show no signs of slowing down and that means the future looks to be big. Although no “major” esports teams apart from Evil Geniuses have secured a crypto-service provider’s partnership – there are still many smaller partnerships that have gone on behind the scenes.
Simplicity Esports for example partnered with a blockchain, “Project Tokan”’ and this partnership seems to be going stronger than ever before. The future of esports and cryptocurrency may be a bumpy road, but companies such as Kraken, Blockchain, or Binance are yet to make that investment into the esports space, but have plenty of time to do so.
The investment for cryptocurrency companies will be to tap the untapped market of esports through partnerships, and possibly even having their own esports teams to carry over an long-run and high-risk marketing campaign.
All in all, the partnership of cryptocurrency and esports in general will likely become a common combination in the next few years. With the addition of Evil Geniuses and Coinbase coming together, there are many other major teams and major crypto suppliers that will be able to partner and make both industries boom for the foreseeable future.
