MoonPay Land Title Partnership for X Games

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The Deal 🤝

X Games has existed as a standalone event series for 30 years.

That era is now over.

On January 25th, during the final standalone X Games event in Aspen, the action sport organisation announced a three-year title partnership with MoonPay, the crypto payments company with 30 million customers across 180 countries.

That deal establishes the MoonPay X Games League (XGL).

It is reportedly worth eight figures and gives MoonPay category exclusivity across finance, banking, and crypto — meaning no other company in those sectors can partner with the league.

X Games is undergoing a full structural transformation — from individual, invitation-only competitions into a year-round, team-based, co-ed professional league. And MoonPay has positioned itself as the anchor sponsor of that new entity.

Although this is MoonPay's first major activation as a sports sponsor, the company has worked with brands like Mastercard on their Pass to Priceless platform, but that was in a vendor capacity.

This is different.

This is MoonPay putting its name on a league and buying category exclusivity.

Jeremy Bloom, CEO of X Games, said:

Ivan Soto Wright, Founder and CEO of MoonPay said:

X Games League Structure 🛹

The new structure was announced back in September 2024, with former Olympic freestyle skier and NFL player Jeremy Bloom appointed as CEO, intending to professionalise the sport.

Enter the X Games League (XGL).

It borrows from Formula 1 and traditional professional sports with four inaugural summer clubs — Los Angeles, New York, São Paulo, and Tokyo — drafting 10 athletes from a pool of over 150 elite skateboarders and BMX riders.

The draft is scheduled for March 12, 2026, at Cosm in Los Angeles, and will stream live on ESPN+. General managers for each club have been announced, including skateboarding legend Bob Burnquist leading Club São Paulo.

The summer season launches in Sacramento on June 26, followed by a stop in Japan, and then a championship event. A winter season covering snowboarding and freeskiing begins in 2027.

Athletes will receive a base salary with additional earning potential through team structures. Paid travel expenses, health insurance stipends, and team-based support structures are all part of the new model, meaning athletes have now got a base level of financial support — rather than relying solely on prize money.

The more interesting component of MoonPay's involvement is the pass-through model. If I’ve read this correctly, MoonPay can extend its partnership rights to companies within its own network, allowing them to activate within the XGL ecosystem through integrated experiences.

It's similar to how AWS and other huge tech businesses market through their partner network. This one relationship opens the door for an entire ecosystem of companies.

Except here, the ecosystem is crypto and the venue is action sports.

Rather than individual crypto companies each negotiating their own sponsorship deals, MoonPay has created a single entry point for the broader industry into action sports.

MoonPay isn't the only crypto-adjacent company building around the new league.

Stake, the online casino and sports betting platform, was confirmed as the exclusive betting partner of the XGL. The Stake-owned streaming service Kick will exclusively livestream all four global XGL events each year, plus the summer and winter drafts. Stake will also collaborate with athletes on co-branded content through an Athlete Ambassador Fund.

Monster Energy became the first founding partner of the XGL back in 2025.

ESPN will broadcast over 100 hours of X Games content across ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, and ESPN+ over the next two years, with global YouTube livestreaming.

MoonPay's Evolution 🌐

So why now?

MoonPay have been a huge player in the crypto industry over the last 5 years — but this is their first major sports or brand sponsorship.

The company started as a simple crypto on-ramp — a way for consumers to buy cryptoassets with a credit or debit card. During the pandemic-era bull run, it became one of the most widely integrated payment processors in crypto, powering transactions on platforms like OpenSea. This led to a $3.4 billion valuation in late 2021.

But MoonPay's core business had a structural problem. On-ramping and off-ramping — converting fiat to crypto and back — is becoming an ever more commoditised market.

Competition has increased dramatically, and over time, pricing will trend toward zero.

The cheapest operators with the largest network effects will win that race.

MoonPay recognised this early and have spent the last two years horizontally integrating across a much broader product set.

In June 2025, they secured a New York BitLicense.

In November 2025, they obtained a New York Trust Charter from the NYDFS, authorising them to provide digital asset custody and OTC trading services.

That puts them alongside Coinbase, PayPal, Ripple, and NYDIG as one of the few companies holding both a BitLicense and a Trust Charter in New York.

They've also been acquiring companies at pace — Helio (Solana-based payments, $175 million), stablecoin infrastructure company Iron, onchain payment tool Decent.xyz, and Meso to improve US on-ramp capabilities.

In 2025, Mastercard tapped MoonPay for stablecoin-powered cards that convert crypto to fiat automatically at the point of sale.

The company reported being cash-flow positive and profitable in 2024, and now powers infrastructure for nearly 500 enterprise customers.

In March 2025, MoonPay secured a $200m line of credit from Galaxy Digital and in December 2025, it was reported that NYSE’s parent company ICE was in talks to invest in MoonPay at a $5 billion valuation, a 47% increase from the 2021 round.

This is not the same MoonPay that in 2021 reached a lofty valuation off the back of processing payments for Bored Ape NFTs.

This is a much more sophisticated business in 2026.

And this sponsorship, to me, alongside the news that ICE may invest in the company make me think going public is on the horizon.

Concluding Thoughts 💭

(1) This is MoonPay's most strategic brand investment to date. The company has spent the past two years building serious financial infrastructure — NY Trust Charter, BitLicense, Mastercard partnership, multiple acquisitions. The X Games title partnership is the consumer-facing extension of that strategy. MoonPay doesn't just want to be the backend payments processor that nobody sees. It wants brand recognition alongside Coinbase and PayPal, and a sports title partnership is one of the fastest ways to achieve that.

(2) The pass-through model is the most underrated element of this deal. The mechanism to bring its entire partner ecosystem into the league is interesting. It’s a first that I’ve seen, and probably only works with a greenfield league but it is definitely something to watch.

(3) The real question is whether the XGL can build a sustainable audience — and recent history suggests that's extremely difficult. Greenfield leagues struggle for a plethora of reasons. It takes enormous capital to survive long enough to build an audience that generates meaningful revenue. And if the model relies on the traditional media playbook — build an audience, sell media rights — it's going to be incredibly tough to compete with existing sports IP that already has decades of built-in loyalty.

We've seen this play out repeatedly. Baller League, the six-a-side indoor football competition backed by Mats Hummels and Lukas Podolski, made a huge splash in the UK with celebrity managers including Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, John Terry, and Luis Figo. It secured a Sky Sports broadcast deal and KSI as the UK president. But in January 2026, it paused operations in Germany — its country of origin — after failing to turn a profit despite million-euro revenues. The organisation said Germany "does not offer the necessary size and structural conditions" to support long-term goals. Three seasons in, and the home market couldn't sustain it. And broadly, Baller League is seen as a success when looking at greenfield sports leagues.

Fan Controlled Football told a similar story. The crypto-native 7-on-7 league raised $40 million in a Series A led by Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital in early 2022, with Bored Ape Yacht Club among its team owners. Season 3 was cancelled, and the league has been dormant ever since.

The absence of an anchor media rights deal is the fundamental challenge. Without that baseline revenue, greenfield leagues are running on venture capital and sponsor money — and both can evaporate quickly. The XGL has ESPN broadcasting over 100 hours of content, which is a strong start. But whether that translates to sustainable, recurring audience engagement in a team-based format for sports that have always been about individual expression remains the open question.

(4) Don't be surprised if an IPO is on the horizon. There is a clear pattern emerging in crypto right now: companies without a token, post-Series B, are all looking at how quickly they can go public. BitGo rang the bell on the NYSE in just this month, jumping nearly 25% on its first day. Kraken filed its S-1 confidentially in November 2025, targeting a listing in H1 2026 at a $20 billion valuation.

MoonPay hasn't officially announced IPO plans, but the pieces are falling into place.

Viewed through that lens, a high-profile sports title partnership makes even more sense. A brand-building exercise for a company that may soon need mainstream name recognition on a prospectus. The XGL won't be tier one in terms of audience size, but it gives MoonPay something most crypto companies don't have: visible, consumer-facing brand equity tied to a sports property.

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