The Perth Heat, a team in the Australian Baseball League, has announced it will become the first professional sporting club to pay its players and staff in bitcoin.
The Heat will also accept bitcoin as payment for sponsorships, merchandise and will even let fans buy snacks with bitcoin during games. CEO Steven Nelkovski said in a media release that the adoption of bitcoin as payment can help the club develop in new ways:
By embracing the underlying values of the Bitcoin protocol we believe that the organisation can reach new levels of success both on and off the field and remind the world of the true value of sports.
The club has also hired a chief bitcoin officer to facilitate the introduction and to shift the corporate treasury from dollars to bitcoin. Mr Patrick O'Sullivan said in the same release that the club is looking to embrace the future of money and corporate treasuries which he believes will live on the Bitcoin Blockchain:
The club has already established an initial position in BTC to help secure its digital property rights on the world’s most secure monetary network and will continue to reinvest available capital into bitcoin.
Formed in 2010, the Australian Baseball League is set for a shakeup with the introduction of this payment.
It is unclear how the club will facilitate bitcoin transactions within the stadium but financial services companies like Visa and Mastercard already have crypto-payment facilities in the pipeline and partnerships underway.m