The team behind the Floki Inu (FLOKI) icon, which is inspired by the dog of the same name, Elon Musk, has signed a sponsorship agreement with Italian football giant S.S.C. Naples.
S.S.C Napoli was founded in 1926 and is one of the most recognizable professional teams in Italy. The historic club won its first Serie A title in 1987 under the late football leader Diego Maradona and is currently ranked first in the league for the 2021-2022 season.
According to a Tuesday post from S.S.C. Napoli, the Floki Inu crest depicting a Shiba Inu dog wearing a Viking helmet, will appear on the back of the Napoli jersey and on LED banners around the team’s stadium for the rest of this season.
Napoli supporter and Cointelegraph President Jay Cassano said he was “delighted to see the club increasingly involved in the industry,” and emphasized the importance of crypto partnerships in professional sports as a pathway to widespread adoption:
“We see crypto companies and projects targeting sports wherever possible, from the NBA to the European football leagues. This presumably requires a wider distribution. Leagues like Serie A and La Liga have been more resistant to crypto sponsorship than the NFL, on the for example. … ”
Floki Inu has added Napoli to its list of collaborating football clubs, which includes Kerala Blasters from the Indian Premier League and Spain’s La Ligas Cádiz. Floki Inu appears to be following the same path as the leading cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which is actively seeking a number of major sports partnerships in 2021.
Napoli have not revealed if this is a multi-year sponsorship deal or how much Floki Inu has spent on the partnership. Floki Inu’s marketing department noted in a statement that the move is part of the project’s ambition to become “the world’s most popular and widely used cryptocurrency.”
Floki’s team has been working on a “major marketing stimulus” since late September, saying the project has set aside $1.5 million for advertising campaigns. Floki Inu targeted London as the city’s premier transport brand location, but the ads proved controversial and caught the attention of the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
According to a BBC report on Friday, the US space agency said it was “reviewing a wide range of ads in this sector” to assess whether they violate advertising rules around complex terminology and misinformation. However, the Floki Inu team said that their ads are “legally reliable” and contain a disclaimer regarding the volatility of the cryptocurrency.
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Earlier this month, Floki Inu also signed a consent agreement with boxing superstar and two-time world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury. As part of the promotional agreement, Fury will participate in an upcoming NFT game called Valhalla within the project.
The Ethereum-based token launched in June earlier this year, and Etherscan reveals that there are around 49,461 FLOKI trading instruments with a fully diluted market capitalization of $1.8 billion.
According to CoinGecko, over the past 24 hours, the price of FLOKI has increased by about 12% to $0.00018840 at the time of writing, with a trading volume of about $25.2 million during that period.
