Arsenal Football Club have again been reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) over their crypto and NFT promotions.
The ASA said the club failed to alert potential investors with suitable warnings about the risks involved and “trivialised” crypto asset investment.
Gunners Slammed over Fan Tokens
Arsenal were rebuked over two adverts for their Arsenal Fan Token (AFC) which, the ASA claims, took advantage of supporters’ lack of knowledge on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and did not make it clear the digital assets had to be bought using cryptocurrency.
The news comes following an appeal over the complaint from the Gunners after the ASA’s initial ruling in 2021.
Arsenal were also criticised last year by the ASA, who banned posts on the club website and Facebook which promoted fan tokens.
“We told Arsenal Football Club to ensure that they made sufficiently clear that the value of investments in paid-for fan tokens was variable and as crypto assets they were unregulated,” the ASA said in the ruling.
Arsenal had argued that they believed fan tokens – bought with Chiliz (CHZ) – and their relationship with crypto was widely understood by the target market.
An Arsenal statement read: “Arsenal believed Socios [the platform Chiliz can be purchased from] was well known in the footballing community as a cryptocurrency platform because they sponsored and partnered with a number of European football clubs.”
The AFC token is currently trading at $1.95, down massively from its high of $6.20 – in fact the coin has not turned a profit for new investors since launching in November 2021.
Arsenal Given a Red Card
Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst with Hargreaves Lansdown told City AM and the Financial Times that the ASA wanted Arsenal to make it clear that the value of fan tokes would be variable ant that crypto assets are unregulated.
“The Advertising Standards Authority is wearing the referee shirt in the high stakes game of crypto trading and has once again shown the red card to Arsenal football club for flogging tokens without high risk warnings attached,” Streeter said.
“ASA officials are faced with the task of running the line, assessing every complaint against companies, but with scant other regulation governing crypto assets, and so many flags springing up it’s becoming an increasingly difficult play to monitor.
“This ruling is another stark reminder that people should resist ploughing money into schemes they don’t fully understand and should only speculate with money they can afford to lose.
“It also highlights the need to speed up the plan to give the city watchdog – the Financial Conduct Authority more powers to regulate the crypto industry, given the government’s vision to make the UK a crypto hub.”
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