Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo partners with Binance for NFT launch

Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has signed a multi-year partnership with Binance to launch a series of NFT collections, the cryptocurrency exchange and NFT marketplace announced Thursday.

"I'm delighted to announce my partnership with Binance," Ronaldo said in a short video posted to his Twitter account. "Together we are going to change the NFT game and take football to the next level. And this is just the beginning."

Ronaldo will have a role in creating the designs for the first NFT collection, the blog post said, which will be available only on Binance's NFT platform. Binance said that the collection is scheduled to debut later this year, but did not give a firm launch date. The financial terms of the partnership are also unknown. Binance users in "select countries" can use Binance Pay to buy the Ronaldo NFTs. 

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As of now, specifics about the utility of the NFTs are also unclear. According to the blog post, Ronaldo's project will provide "a one-of-a-kind experience for football fans worldwide, with a series of NFT collections that will launch exclusively on Binance’s official NFT platform."

This is not the first time Ronaldo has been associated with a crypto project. In 2019 he played with Italy's Juventus Football Club, which launched a token called $JUV that unlocked voting power and rewards for fans.

Binance has several other soccer partnerships with different teams and clubs including the Argentine Football Association, the Brazilian Football Confederation, S.S. Lazio in Italy and FC Porto in Portugal. 

About Author

Kristin Majcher is a senior correspondent at The Block, based in Colombia. She covers the Latin America market. Before joining, she worked as a freelancer with bylines in Fortune, Condé Nast Traveler and MIT Technology Review among other publications.