BitPay buys St. Petersburg College Bowl’s branding rights

From left to right: Tony Gallippi. BitPay executive chairman; Brett Dulaney, executive director of the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl; and Stephen Pair, BitPay CEO.

BitPay, the world’s largest Bitcoin payment processor, said in a press release sent to CoinReport this morning that it had purchased branding rights to the St. Petersburg College Bowl.

The event will now be called “Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl.”

“Attention College #Football Fans! We are officially the Bitcoin St.Petersburg Bowl! #btcbowl @BitPay pic.twitter.com/Od8ZNgVMlV,” the bowl management tweeted.

The contract will last for the next four years, and the new logo of the event looks like this:

BitPay replaces the last sponsor of the college bowl, Beef O’ Brady’s, a chain of restaurants and sports bars.

The St. Petersburg college bowl is the annual post-season college football game hosted in St. Petersburg, Florida, by ESPN Events, a subsidiary of the ESPN sports broadcasting network. The event is in its first year of an association with the Atlantic Coast Conference and the American Athletic Conference, both of which will be bringing teams to this year’s game.

This represents the largest marketing campaign intended to push Bitcoin into the public consciousness in a positive way. It’s also the first time Bitcoin has been used to brand a sporting event, although not the first time a cryptocurrency has — that honor goes to the Dogecoin community, which raised money to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise in May. BitPay is currently leading the charge to push Bitcoin into mass-market acceptance, and clearly feels that pushing the Bitcoin brand into the public consciousness is a critical part of that mission.

The 2014 Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl will kick off at 8PM ET on Friday December 26, 2014.  Tickets start at $40.