Watford FC has named Italian coach Alessio Dionisi as its new head coach, signing him to a two-year contract. Dionisi brings experience from stints managing Empoli, Sassuolo, and Palermo in Italy, and his reported salary sits at around €500,000 per year.

The club that put Bitcoin on its shirt

Back in 2019, the club featured Bitcoin on its match shirts. In 2021, Watford signed a shirt sponsorship deal with Stake, the crypto-native betting platform, accepting cryptocurrency payments as part of the arrangement.

In 2024, Watford became the first major English football club to offer tokenized digital equity through a partnership with Republic on the Avalanche blockchain. The offering gave fans and investors the chance to purchase a 10% equity stake in the club. The sale was structured to accept fiat currency purchases, lowering the barrier to entry for traditional football fans.

Avalanche, Republic, and the tokenized ownership model

The Avalanche blockchain was chosen for the 2024 equity offering, and Republic served as the platform facilitating the sale. The 10% stake represented actual equity, fractionalized and distributed on-chain, grounding the token’s value in a share of the club’s financial performance.

Other clubs have experimented with fan tokens, most notably through Socios and its Chiliz-powered platform. But those tokens typically offer voting rights on minor decisions rather than genuine ownership stakes.