Crypto exchange Bitget has secured a multi-million dollar partnership with Spain’s premier football league, La Liga, as its official crypto partner.
CEO Gracy Chen announced the news during an interview at the Token2049 conference in Singapore. The two-year deal, which covers Eastern and Southeast Asia, as well as Latin America (LATAM), may impact the renewal of Bitget’s partnership with Argentina’s World Cup-winning captain Lionel Messi, whose contract with the exchange is set to expire later this year.
“We still haven’t decided” how the partnership with Messi will evolve, Chen said, but noted that the La Liga deal is “slightly cheaper” and offers “more freedom and deeper collaborations.” This new partnership enables Bitget to invite star footballers, including Kylian Mbappé, to participate in the exchange’s events.
Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, added: “Over the last decade, digitalization and innovation have been among La Liga’s priorities. Last season, we made this a priority under the umbrella of our New Era, which put the emphasis on technology: we want to be pioneers and we are committed to it,” he said in the announcement.
The partnership was announced the same week that Bitget, alongside Web3 investor Foresight Ventures, increased its exposure to The Open Network (TON) by $30 million through a deal with key players in the TON ecosystem.
Chen also highlighted TON’s growing global reach, surpassing 45 million users worldwide. “Even with the Telegram founder being arrested in Paris, the TON foundation is not losing momentum. We are very bullish,” she added.
Bitget has been scaling its global reach, recently registering as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) in Poland and securing similar approval in Lithuania. The Singaporean centralized platform, which debuted in 2018, is a diverse crypto exchange that supports spot and futures trading, copy trading, farming and staking services.
Bitget also acted as Juventus official partner and official cryptocurrency exchange partner, and its first-ever sleeve partner. The cryptocurrency derivatives exchange reportedly has 1.6 million registered users in 48 countries and regions including UK, France, Italy, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.
