S.L. Benfica, a famous football club from Portugal, decided to accept payments using Bitcoin (BTC) on its official website in the near future. Apart from BTC, fans can buy tickets, t-shirts and all Benfica knick-knacks can be purchased using a special token named UTK or Ether (ETH).

This alternative payment method can be realized because the football club cooperates with Utrust by converting crypto money into fiat money instantly. In this way, Benfica can avoid price declines given the very volatile cryptocurrency in the spot market.

"Many of our supporters use crypto assets. With around 7 million of our supporters on social media, we also want to accommodate that by adopting the cryptocurrency, "explained the CEO of Benfica to Verdict.co.uk, Wednesday (June 5, 2019).

“This is an exciting day in the history of S.L. Benfica as we announce our decision to accept cryptocurrency payments,” says SL Benfica CEO Domingos Soares de Oliveira. “We recognize that many of our supporters are now digital users first, so we want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting novel technologies and giving our supporters the best online experience.”

Benfica, which has over 14 million supporters across the globe, and a fan base of over 7 million across all social media platforms, hopes that the partnership will evolve its e-commerce strategy and expand its global audience and customer reach. The club hopes to draw in tech-savvy football fans and also introduce the concept of blockchain payments to existing fans.

The adoption of cryptocurrencies is increasingly widespread in the sports sector, especially football. In April, West Ham United, a football club that played in the English Premier League, partnered with the Socios blockchain platform to launch digital tokens for its fans. The token can be used for souvenir purchases, conducting polls and a number of models of rewards to West Ham United fans. The digital token will be launched at the start of this year's season.

To be able to purchase the digital token through the Fan Token Offering (FTO) mechanism, users must use another digital token, namely $ chz made by Chiliz that runs on block Ethereum, "Socios told Cointelegraph, Tuesday (04/30) via broadcast pers.[]