The World Cup has always been the biggest sporting event on the planet. This year, it is also becoming one of the biggest crypto marketing events on the planet.
FIFA named Kraken its Official Crypto Exchange Supporter on June 9, 2026, making it the first time a crypto exchange has held an official sponsorship role at a World Cup. The tournament spans 48 teams and 104 matches across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, giving Kraken a very large stage to work with.
The partnership is not purely a logo placement exercise. Kraken is expected to activate across host cities, engaging fans directly in markets where crypto adoption rates vary wildly.
A custom blockchain, NFTs, and the war on scalpers
Behind the Kraken deal sits a more ambitious infrastructure play. FIFA Collect, the organization’s digital collectibles platform, migrated from the Algorand blockchain to a custom Layer-1 blockchain built on Avalanche. The reasoning is practical: lower fees and better throughput for the volume of transactions a 104-match tournament generates.
The FIFA Blockchain has now processed over $25 million in combined NFT and rights trading volume.
FIFA has issued over 100,000 Right-to-Buy tickets on the blockchain. In English: instead of a paper or PDF ticket that can be screenshot and resold ten times over, buyers hold a verified on-chain credential that controls access to the purchase of an actual seat. It is an anti-scalping mechanism dressed up as a Web3 feature, and honestly, the anti-scalping part is the more compelling use case.
Fan tokens and the Chiliz rally
While FIFA builds its own infrastructure, the fan token ecosystem around the tournament has been doing its own thing. Chiliz, the blockchain platform behind the Socios fan token model, reported a 28% increase in CHZ’s value during the early stages of the World Cup.
National team fan tokens on the Socios platform saw rising trading volumes as the group stage got underway.
What this means for investors watching the space
The Kraken deal and the Avalanche blockchain buildout represent two different investment theses playing out simultaneously. Kraken gains brand exposure to a global audience at a moment when the exchange is navigating a competitive landscape that includes Coinbase, Binance, and a growing field of regional players. An official FIFA partnership is a credibility signal, particularly in markets where consumers are still deciding which exchange to trust with their funds.
For Avalanche, hosting FIFA’s custom Layer-1 is a reference client that no marketing budget can easily replicate. If the blockchain handles 104 matches worth of ticketing and NFT transactions without notable failures, that is a proof-of-concept that speaks directly to enterprise and institutional clients evaluating which Layer-1 to build on.
Longer term, FIFA has signaled interest in prediction market partnerships, with ADI Predictstreet referenced in ongoing discussions, as well as the potential development of a native FIFA Coin. Neither is confirmed, but both represent meaningful surface area for crypto markets if they materialize.
