France is tearing through the 2026 FIFA World Cup with 16 goals and a semifinal berth, powered by what analysts are calling the “Fabulous Five.” Kylian Mbappe leads the charge with 6 goals. Ousmane Dembele has added 4 of his own. Michael Olise has been threading assists like he’s playing FIFA on easy mode.

But here’s what’s conspicuously absent from the biggest sporting event on earth: crypto.

The sponsorship void that says everything

Rewind to 2022, and the Qatar World Cup was drowning in crypto branding. Crypto.com had its logo everywhere. Algorand was FIFA’s official blockchain partner. Bybit, Binance, and a parade of exchanges were jockeying for eyeball time during the most-watched sporting event on the planet.

Four years later, the conversation around France’s dominant tournament run, including a commanding 3-0 demolition of Sweden in the knockouts, is entirely about football. No token launches tied to player NFTs. No fan token price movements tracking Mbappe’s goal tally. No blockchain-based ticketing discourse.

The crypto industry’s retreat from major sports sponsorships has been one of the quieter stories of the past two years. After FTX’s spectacular collapse in late 2022, which left its name literally chiseled off the Miami Heat’s arena, the appetite for nine-figure sports deals evaporated.

What France’s run tells us about attention economics

France’s attacking output this tournament has been remarkable. The squad has created the most significant scoring chances of any team in the competition. Defensive anchors Dayot Upamecano and William Saliba have kept things locked down at the back. Record-breaking fan attendance at France’s matches underscores something the crypto industry learned the hard way: attention is expensive, and converting it into lasting engagement is even harder.

When Crypto.com paid a reported $700 million to rename the Staples Center, the implicit bet was that brand awareness would translate into user acquisition. Coinbase, which ran that infamous QR code Super Bowl ad, has since pivoted toward regulatory positioning and institutional products. Binance has been busy navigating legal settlements.

The fan token experiment, revisited

Socios and Chiliz built an entire ecosystem around the idea that football supporters would pay crypto premiums for voting rights on trivial club decisions. Paris Saint-Germain, Mbappe’s former club, was one of the biggest participants.

Fan tokens mostly functioned as speculative instruments that tracked team performance with a crypto-sized volatility multiplier. When PSG lost, the token dumped. When they won, it pumped, but never quite back to previous highs.

France’s current World Cup squad features multiple players whose former and current clubs experimented with fan tokens. Yet nobody covering this tournament, from FotMob’s statistical breakdowns to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s punditry praising France’s squad depth, is discussing tokenized fan engagement.