Johnson pitched the soccer takeover to business partners as a real-life version of the feel-good TV show “Ted Lasso” - but one injected with “crypto cocaine.”īut results on the field have been disastrous: The week before the Newport match, Crawley lost, 3-0, to Grimsby Town, prompting Mr. With a flourish of tech industry bravado, the owners had pledged to turn lowly Crawley into the “internet’s team.” They aimed to build a global following of crypto enthusiasts and propel the club to greatness - or at least help it move up from the fourth division to the third. Johnson had sketched out six months earlier, when he and a group of fellow American crypto entrepreneurs raised $18 million to buy Crawley, a soccer club competing three divisions below the flagship Premier League. This was not the vision of blockchain-inspired sporting ecstasy that Mr. And with one win in its first 12 games, the team sat in last place in League Two, the lowest fully professional division of English soccer, facing possible relegation. In the physical world, Crawley had more immediate problems: The scoreboard was broken. Johnson explained that the rainbow-colored squiggle splashed across Crawley’s new Adidas jerseys was artwork from a “historically significant NFT.” Someday, he said, an immersive recording of this type of run-of-the-mill soccer match might attract viewers in the metaverse. Straining to make himself heard over shouts of “Shoot the bloody ball,” Mr. Johnson, 35, sat in a box above the center circle, watching Crawley Town face off against visiting Newport County, a club from south Wales. The setting was humbler: a small soccer stadium in a town about 30 miles south of London, where the lowest-ranked team in England’s professional leagues was battling for survival. He wasn’t perched on a mega yacht or enjoying any of the other ostentatious perks of crypto wealth. Preston Johnson, a soft-spoken cryptocurrency millionaire with a long, bushy, brown beard, leaned forward in his seat, fists clenched, surveying his empire.
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