Crawley Town: A cryptocurrency failure in sports
The 7th of April last week celebrated a year to the day that Crawley Town completed a takeover of the club, which was purchased by a group of American cryptocurrency investors known as WAGMI United. This followed on from Turkish businessmen Ziya Eren selling his controlling shares on after taking over the club from March of 2016. It’s safe to say, this takeover hasn’t been without major controversy, with Red Devils’ fans wanting to turn their back on this season as soon as possible.
As mentioned earlier, the 7th of April 2022 is when the group of investors originally took over the club, with the new owners seeing out the rest of the 2021/22 season and onwards. Preston Johnson & Eben Smith are appointed as directors of the club, and make a promise to the fans that if the club are not promoted to League 2 by the end of the 2023/24 season, then a vote will be held whether to keep the current directors at the club, or remove them in favour of different WAGMI members.
Later that month, the club confirmed ten first-team players had signed two-year contracts to stay at the club, with eight of those deals including an extra one-year option. Some of these included goalkeeper Glen Morris, striker Kwesi Appiah and former Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder James Tilley.
Even with all of the group above being labelled as “key players”, seven of these would eventually leave the club, with four being loaned out to other League Two outfits and three having their contracts terminated.
May saw a major turning point within the staff team at the club, with at the time first team head coach John Yems being suspended for discriminatory language and behaviour towards opposition and players at the club. This put Lewis Young in temporary charge of the club, with Yems eventually parting ways with Crawley in early May, and being charged on sixteen accounts of FA rule breaches between 2019 & 2022.
However, June of that year begins to look brighter for Crawley fans, as major statements of intent start to be made by the WAGMI board. First, the arrival of former Arsenal Under 23 coach Kevin Betsy and assistant Dan Micciche as John Yems’ replacement. Then came Dom Telford, the leagues top scorer & a member of the “PFA League 2 Team of the Year” from the previous campaign, who signed for the Red Devils on a two-year deal. Season tickets for the oncoming season also went on sale on a projected 34% cheaper than the previous season, and they sell well, showing the fans are obviously positive and invested in a future that WAGMI is promising.
WAGMI United also announced a partnership with Adidas, with the sports brand becoming The Red Devils’ official kit manufacturer for the 2022/23 season. The kit release also included a third kit, which controversially only was available to NFT holders only, which meant fans of the club could not purchase replica kits without having access to investing.
The honeycomb-like pattern with the Chromie Squiggle is a multicoloured NFT from the Art Blocks Curated Collection, and became the primary sponsor of every kit produced for Crawley this season.
Later that month on the 28th, WAGMI put out a tweet explaining their visions, some of those included:
- “To take Crawley Town FC, the smallest team in the English Football League, to the Premier League”
- “ To reinvent broken legacy sports management models”
- “To give fans a meaningful voice”
They also put an emphasis on making Crawley Town “the internets team”, with a vision of connecting fans across the world to the club through NFT’s and other cryptocurrency methods, to bring a major following towards the club and get global exposure to their own brand.
July and August continues the major changes set out by the WAGMI board as statician Chris Galley is appointed as Director of Football for the Red Devils. NFT owners and season ticket holders voted on which area of the team they want to be strengthened that month, a complete first in football ownership. A fan council is also set up which allows Crawley fans to feedback to the owners and board for new and fresh ideas for the club. However, Jack Payne who signed a new deal with the club just three months prior has his contract terminated by the club, even after being considered a “key player” by the board, showing the first of many cracks of the WAGMI United ownership.
However, September isn’t exactly the best of months for the club during the WAGMI era. Despite the 2–0 Carabao Cup victory over Premier League outfit Fulham, the club is charged with a breach of FA Rule E20 after owner Hunter Orrell invaded the pitch after the full time whistle. Another “key player” in Kwesi Appiah is also loaned out to Colchester United, joining Jack Payne in leaving after signing these new lucrative deals.
However the same month, the club put a tweet out with a link to an article mentioning they would be sending scouts to a charity football match hosted by YouTube sensation group the “Sidemen”.
The article read:
“Crawley Town Football Club and WAGMI United are delighted to announce a new partnership with The Sidemen — Europe’s largest YouTube collective — ahead of the 2022 Sidemen FC Charity Match on September 24. Scouts will be on hand at the match to evaluate participating players, potentially looking to recruit new talent to join the team in training and in the dugout for the Red Devils’ upcoming FA Cup first-round match on 5 November.”
The club were understandably labelled as “jokes” with some journalists and media members labelling it as a “PR stunt”, and fans of the club calling it a “braindead idea” & “an experiment in exchange for a few quid.”
WAGMI later that month made an announcement which stated the unpopular decision to pick the team for the clubs second Papa John’s Trophy group stage fixture away at AFC Wimbledon. This was eventually U-turned after the incredible backlash they received from fans for even considering such an idea. In the same week, fans begin to turn on Kevin Betsy and his management after a 4–1 away loss at a very poor Doncaster Rovers side, meaning things both on and off the pitch were not going the way WAGMI United originally promised.
With the club sitting at the foot of the League 2, Kevin Betsy and his assistant were relieved of their duties following a 3–0 defeat away at Grimsby and a complete winless month of September. Lewis Young yet again takes interim charge of the club before Matty Etherington is appointed as the new Head Coach in November, with Young leaving the club after 8 years after being brushed away from the managerial role. However, Etherington would only be in charge for thirty-two days and three matcher as he would leave the club on the 29th December as Etherington was in Chris Galley’s eyes, “not the right fit to carry the club forward and achieve our goals.” Darren Byfield is played in temporary charge of the club and becomes the second caretaker manager that year. Club Captain George Francombe also leaves Crawley this month by mutual consent, again one of the ten “key players” who signed a deal in April of last year. “WAGMI out” banners begin to appear on the terraces the same month, with small protests also held against the investor group ownership. The CTSA (Crawley Town Supporters Alliance) offer free memberships to the Crawley Town fanbase in a campaign to uncover the motives and intensions of the WAGMI United board.
January sees striker Tom Nichols and goalkeeper Glen Morris leave the club to join fellow relegation strugglers Gillingham, with Morris being one of the ten “key players” to sign deals in April of 2022.
This was a decision that inevitably angered fans and even players out on loan, with striker Kwesi Appiah at Colchester United tweeting that the club account had “surely been hacked” after the announcement of the sale was made. Gillingham now sit 9 points clear of both Crawley Town and the relegation zone, with the Gills currently thriving under new ownership and manager Neil Harris.
Scott Lindsay becomes the third full time manager to be appointed that season and the fifth person to be appointed into the role, and replaces caretaker Darren Byfield. Lindsay is still the current manager as of the 13th April 2022.
February and March again haven’t been the best of months for the club, with incredibly poor form leaving them in the relegation zone leaving them at a disadvantage to stay in the football league. Experienced defender, Tony Craig, has also departed the club to join National League outfit Dorking Wanderers. However the worst of all of the incidents comes off the pitch courtesy of the WAGMI board, as an employee is sacked using the football clubs official account to comment on streams relating to pornography.
Which leads us on to April 2023, exactly one year on from the takeover. The club are battling for survival with just five games to go at the complete opposite end of the table as to what they were promised. The WAGMI United reign has promised things which it has not delivered, and you can’t not stand in solidarity with loyal Crawley Town fans. This ownership has proved completely that sports and NFT’s cannot mix, otherwise it leads to a complete greediness for brand exposure and a mess in structure.
