When it comes to one of the greatest strikers in soccer history, crypto still has legs.
Despite ongoing litigation facing both Cristiano Ronaldo and Binance, the Portuguese star unveiled his fourth collection of NFTs with the global cryptocurrency exchange Wednesday.
Thousands of digital collectibles featuring work produced by seven different artists will go on sale exclusively on Binance’s NFT marketplace over the next two weeks for $35 each. Certain holders will later receive benefits such as jerseys and match tickets, while a handful of rarer NFTs will be sold at auction in June. Buyers of those digital items will have the chance to meet Ronaldo in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he plays for Al-Nassr FC. Owners of all six of the regular NFTs (each representing a different stop during Ronaldo’s career) will also have a chance to compete in a quiz to earn the seventh NFT, representing Portugal, and join that trip.
The announcement comes weeks after Florida judge Roy Altman denied Ronaldo’s request to dismiss a $1 billion lawsuit against the star for promoting the “sale of unregistered securities in coordination with Binance.”
Binance launched the first set of Ronaldo NFTs in November 2022, and the soccer star has posted about the company multiple times to his more than 630 million followers on Instagram.
As blockchain technology made a bid for public adoption, several companies turned to sports—and its biggest stars, including Ronaldo, Tom Brady and Steph Curry—to increase the industry’s credibility.
“For me, it’s all about trust,” Ronaldo said in a 2023 online Q&A when explaining his favorite thing about Binance.
Binance has also signed deals with soccer organizations including FC Porto and S.S. Lazio, as well as F1 team Alpine. It claims to have onboarded more than a million new users through sports partnerships.
“Once these users come to Binance, they engage quickly with our brand,” Binance head of global partnerships and entertainment Sarah Dale said. “We’re seeing them come and learn with us and engage with us and we are seeing that increase after the campaign period.”
Criticism of those connections picked up in 2022, particularly following the bankruptcy of Binance rival FTX. Brady, Curry, Shohei Ohtani and Shaquille O’Neal were all named in a lawsuit against FTX’s celebrity endorsers, while MLB and Jimmy Butler have also been subjects of legal actions.
As part of a deal with the US government last November, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties, while former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pled guilty to money laundering violations after prosecutors said Al-Qaeda and Islamic State members, among other bad actors, utilized the service. In April, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison.
“Words cannot explain how deeply I regret my choices that result in me being before the Court,” he said in a letter to the judge before sentencing, while also noting that Binance implemented stronger controls in 2022. “Rest assured that it will never happen again.”
Binance is now moving forward under new leadership.
“Positioning ourselves for the next 50 years means understanding crypto’s current challenges and working to develop industry-leading standards to address them,” the company wrote when announcing its resolution with U.S. investigators. “We have built a community and an ecosystem that empowers individuals to harness the power of blockchain technology to unlock opportunities for their families, communities and economies around the world, and we are committed to ensuring that the transformative power of these technologies is experienced by more people worldwide.”
Crypto backers have seen reasons for optimism in recent months. Bitcoin prices surpassed $70,000 for the first time in March, while Binance Coin prices are up more than 90% year-over-year. Ronaldo’s third collaboration with Binance debuted in October, offering 50,000 free collectibles and a more select number of tangible rewards.
“With each drop we’ve really seen more interest from fans,” Dale said, “and we continue to push ourselves to deliver on more creativity, on more access to him, on bigger rewards, to one-up ourselves each time.”
Binance is still battling a separate, 13-charge lawsuit from the Security and Exchange Commission, which has been described by Binance US COO Christopher Blodgett in a deposition as a “near-mortal blow” to the U.S. operation.
In part due to legal restrictions, Ronaldo’s newest NFT set, “Forever Worldwide: The Road to Saudi Arabia,” is not available in the U.S., where Binance’s core international service is currently prohibited.
