F1 News: AlphaTauri Loses Two Sponsors As Crypto and Blockchain Values Nosedive
The AlphaTauri team has reportedly parted ways with Fantom and ICM.com, two of its sponsors. This news was shared by Decal Spotters on Twitter, though the Red Bull sister team has yet to make an official statement on the matter.
According to its website, Fantom is a “highly scalable blockchain platform for DeFi, crypto dApps, and enterprise applications” that was a sponsor for the team, joining them ahead of the 2022 season, while ICM.com is an international online Forex and CFD trading company that joined as a sponsor in 2021.
The decision to remove Fantom and ICM.com as sponsors comes amid a challenging time for the cryptocurrency industry, with the value of cryptocurrencies and blockchains experiencing a significant decline over the past year. In addition, other teams in the Formula 1 series have also seen sponsorships with cryptocurrency firms come to an end. For example, Ferrari removed Velas as a sponsor, while Mercedes‘ official crypto partner, FTX, declared bankruptcy at the end of 2022.
While there are still a number of cryptocurrency sponsorships present in the Formula 1 series, it seems that the trend of such sponsorships is decreasing. This development for AlphaTauri also coincides with the departure of driver Pierre Gasly from the team, who moved to Alpine. It is worth noting that Fantom and ICM.com both have the same founder, and were initially sponsored by Gasly as his personal sponsors before he joined AlphaTauri.
It remains to be seen how this change will impact AlphaTauri’s sponsorship strategy moving forward. As of now, neither AlphaTauri nor Alpine – Gasly’s new team – have made any official statements on the matter. It will be interesting to see if other teams in the Formula 1 series follow suit and also choose to end sponsorships with cryptocurrency firms.
