BITmarkets Publishes New Study Ranking the Top 10 Athletes in Crypto Partnerships

[PRESS RELEASE – Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, August 17th, 2026] BITmarkets has published a new study, >Crypto and Elite Athletes: More Than Just a Sponsorship, exploring what happened when crypto’s rapid rise met the world of elite sport. From NFT collections and fan tokens to equity deals and salaries converted into bitcoin, the study looks behind the headlines at how some of the biggest names in sport became involved with digital assets. Following its recent >analysis of football clubs and competitions, BITmarkets has now shifted the focus from teams to individual athletes across football, basketball, American football, baseball and tennis. Rather than simply asking who signed the biggest deal, the study compares how the partnerships worked, what each athlete brought to them and how the market changed after 2022. Which Athletes Made the Top 10? The ranking brings together Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Shohei Ohtani, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, Trevor Lawrence and Shaquille O’Neal, together with Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala. The familiar names, however, are only the start of the story. The full chart shows how differently the deals were built, from multi-year ambassador roles and NFT projects to venture investments, equity stakes and payments converted into >crypto assets. How Big Did Crypto Sponsorship Become? >BITmarkets notes that global crypto sports sponsorship spending exceeded $742 million in 2022 across 230 active contracts. In the NBA, crypto moved from the 43rd-largest corporate sponsorship category to the second-largest within a single season, generating an estimated $100 million to $150 million in annual team and league revenue. Those figures help explain why athlete deals quickly became more ambitious than standard advertising contracts. Some ambassadors received equity or tokens alongside promotional fees, while others chose direct exposure to crypto through payment conversions. The study traces examples ranging from Russell Okung converting half of his NFL salary into bitcoin to partnerships in which Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala converted parts o