Only a week after the English football club, Manchester City inked a deal with crypto Startup 3Key, the football giant pulled out as scarcely available information about the decentralized finance (DeFi) firm raised questions.
The cancellation of the deal came before the activation of their partnerships on any specific products.
“Prompted by the club's interactions with 3Key Technologies in recent days, Manchester City is now conducting further inquiries regarding 3Key Technologies, and the partnership has been suspended pending satisfactory resolution to all of those inquiries,” a Manchester City spokesperson said in a statement to The Daily Mail.
3Key, which is a DeFi analysis and Trading Platform , officially announced its deal with Manchester City last week on Monday under which it was about to become a regional partner of the football team.
However, multiple media reports soon pointed out the lack of publicly available information about the DeFi startup and its executives. Even Ryan S Hodder, who was named in the official partnership press release as 3Key’s Chief Marketing Officer, did not have any online footprint, let alone the other top executives.
Though there is no evidence of wrongdoings on the part of 3Key, the lack of public information and other questions raised by the media reports have forced the football club to pull out from the deal.
Football Clubs Are Getting Cautious
However, Manchester City is not the only football club to squash a crypto deal. Last Thursday, Barcelona FC cancelled its own marketing deal with Ownix, a non-fungible token marketplace, as the platform was linked to the recently arrested Israeli businessman, Moshe Hogeg, who is a suspect of crypto fraud.
Despite the splinters of cautions, cash-rich crypto companies are closing massive deals with football giants, thus putting their brand in front of the lucrative football fans and in the mainstream.
