A Facebook and webpage post by the football club of Arsenal encouraging fans of crypto-based tokens broke the rules of advertising, a watchdog has ruled.
“To demonstrate the danger in the investments, the club had failed,” the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) debated.
Arsenal stated that the club had offered information on the financial risks and it would pursue an independent review of the resolution.
A few football club top-tiers provide fan tokens.
But the authorities involving a few groups of supporters advises that the clubs promoting tokens of crypto-fan are inspiring peoples to invest in the largely unregulated and risky world of cryptocurrency investments.
Inexperienced consumers-
The ASA governs in oppositions of Arsenal’s fan tokens (AFC).
As per watchdog, the first debt pointed, on the content displayed on official website of Arsenal, and this page was displayed on 6th August 2021.
And the second violation was posted on 12th August, which was a post of Facebook on the official page of the club, which says: Presently $AFC is live and questioned fans- “Once we win? Which type of song do you all want to listen and enjoy? In order to take your token and vote, download the Socios application”.
In its decision, the investigation of ASA include three issues by considering the website text and the posts, claiming they were:
Irresponsible- as they have taken advantage of the inexperience or credulity of customers and minimized the investments in assets of crypto.
Misleading- as they failed to represent the hazards of investments.
Additionally, it also stated that the “post of the Facebook didn’t make clear that “token” was an asset of crypto and which would obtain by only opening an account and interchanging with other cryptocurrencies which have to buy”.
It addressed that, the watchdog figured out that both the Facebook post and the website has broken its rules: “The advertisement should not display again in the form of complaint.”
The ruling addressed, in the future, the club should keep in mind that the tokens are assets of cryptocurrency, and the values of trading in crypto-assets were are changing and are unregulated crypto-assets.
High-risk-
Few groups of supporters are cautious. However, the “Arsenal Supporters Trust” said in August, that the club should clarify that the cryptocurrency assets were ‘risky’ and are ‘un-regulated activity”.
The board member of the Trust, Tim Payton, addressed to BBC that, the club should not authorize to use the popularity of football to force an intrinsically high- risk products”.
However, the Trust faith that the football authorities and the government should look for a partnership among the cryptocurrency companies and the clubs.
Mr. Payton stated that, if they are ready to continue a huge attempt is required to be made in order to make sure that all marketing materials “advise all fans included in purchasing the tokens”.
Whereas, the Advertising Standard Authorities (ASA) started analyzing the crypto-assets such as “Bitcoin” is a priority of red-alert, and yet it is worried that many of the advertisements have failed to completely convey the hazards of investing”.
The Authority Chief Executive, Guy Parker addressed to BBC that the public has badly understood the crypto-assets and was unregulated and was not promoted by the financial schemes of compensation.
And he noticed that consumers “think advisedly before purchasing. Do you all recognize cryptocurrency assets well enough? And can you bear the loss, that you have spent?”
While, the watchdog states that it will plan to provide guidance on marketing of crypto-assets in the upcoming year, and will pursue to issue ruling on advertisements for crypto-currencies, NFT’s and the fan tokens in provisional.
Crypto Boom-
The very first club, Arsenal whose marketing of fan tokens is considered to have broken (through) advertising standards by the watchdog.
It is the only club to own the joined forces with the company known as ‘Socios’ which provides fan tokens via, its app.
The ‘Socios’ addressed the Tech Tent Podcast of BBC that it has sold worth $270m-300m of coins via, their app but they refused to disclose how much money directly goes to clubs with whom they are working.
Where, the club says that, by gathering tokens of fans, the supporters can affect the club’s running and advised the more tokens collected by fans, they say they perhaps have more.
With the free irregulatory non-tradable fans tokens only offered to the members of the club, the fans have to make use of “Chiliz ($CHZ)” cryptocurrency for buying and selling the tokens.
However, some of the clubs sell digital tokens, which are known as “NFT’s (non-fungible tokens)”.
In September, ‘Sorare’ a French firm, sells the cards of football trading in the form of NFT’s and has raised the fundings of $680m which is 498m pounds.
