Oxford City Football club will have the BTC emblem on its uniforms and supporters will be able to purchase tickets using Bitcoin via the Lightning Network.
The acceptance of Bitcoin (BTC) payments in the United Kingdom has now added a new player. When the new season begins on August 6, Oxford City Football Club hopes to make history by being the first National League team to accept Bitcoin for matchday payments.
At Oxford City’s RAW Charging Stadium, patrons will be able to pay for tickets, food, and beverages with Bitcoin over the Lightning Network. Cash and credit cards are still accepted as traditional payment methods.
The National League South is the sixth division of English football, where Oxford City Football Club (OCFC) now competes. The club and CoinCorner, an Isle of Man-based Bitcoin business, have a multi-year collaboration. CoinCorner announced a limited-edition Oxford City FC Bolt Card to commemorate their sponsorship of the team’s back of the shirt.
As part of their affiliation with CoinCorner, The Hoops, as they are called locally, will wear a BTC emblem on the back of their matchday shirts. The debut encounter of Oxford City FC (OCFC) on August 6 will also include CoinCorner as the official match sponsor.
Real Bedford, a football team that supports cryptocurrency, will start taking bitcoin payments for matchday tickets on the same day. The Bedford team, on the other hand, competes in the Spartan South Midlands League, a lower level local league.
OCFC is the “first adopter of Bitcoin payments in the National League,” according to CoinCorner CEO Danny Scott. Scott carried on:
“We believe this move will set a trend across Non-league and Football League divisions as digital currency establishes itself as the new normal for sports fans and event-goers across the U.K.”
Coach Carbon, a proponent of bitcoin and the creator of OxBit, an Oxford Bitcoin group, described the history of the transaction to Cointelegraph. A day of football focused on Bitcoin was held at OCFC in December 2022 as part of the Bitcoin Ballers Winter Cup festival.
Since then, OxBit has held a number of meetups on the club grounds, and Carbon has continued to promote the use of Bitcoin in the neighborhood. With the new commercial director of the football team, Carbon maintained a relationship and had “many informal discussions about engaging and assisting the community through events & education.”
“A three-way call was arranged and things progressed from there once the football club understood and could see the impact CoinCorner could make with regards to Bitcoin education and adoption.”
“More than 3.3 million people living in the U.K. now hold Bitcoin,” said Justin Merritt, Oxford City FC’s director of football, “an increase of almost one million people in the last year alone.”
According to an FCA report from June 2021, up to 2.3 million Britons may possess Bitcoin, and a Coinbase report increased that number to as much as one-third of Britons who may be interested in cryptocurrencies. Merritt went on:
“It’s not mandatory for people to engage with our new technology, but we believe in time, paying via Bitcoin will become the new normal in English football.”
While Edinburgh is eager to host a Bitcoin conference in October of this year, grassroots Bitcoin use is expanding across the United Kingdom.
