Watford Football Club players, which became the world’s richest soccer league this year, will wear a Dogecoin (DOGE) logo on their sleeves for the 2021-2022 season as part of their sponsorship deal with gambling company Stake.com, The Athletic reported on Saturday.

The Premier League is a hot target for sponsors due to the fact that it’s the most lucrative soccer league in the world, with 5.86 billion euros ($6.92 billion) of revenue in 2019 – according to UEFA.

Watford, however, is no stranger to crypto as for its 2019/20 Premier League season, it sported a Bitcoin logo on its shirts as part of a sponsorship deal with Sportsbet.io.

Sports and crypto tie-ups are actually becoming more and more common as recently football star Lionel Messi signed a new contract with Paris Saint Germain, and as part of it, he will be paid partly in crypto fan token PSG.

Digital asset exchange Crypto.com is also sponsoring the Aston Martin Formula 1, team.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is particularly known for its partnerships which inked a $135 million deal with Miami-Dade County to name the home of the Miami Heat “FTX Arena.” This year, FTX also partnered with Major League Baseball (MLB), eSports Team TSM, NFL quarterback Trevor Lawrence, and more recently signed popular NFL player Tom Brady and Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary as an ambassador.

This time, it’s DOGE, which rallied over 41% in the past week and more than 63% in the last two weeks.

Trading at about $0.34, DOGE is still down 54% from its all-time high in early May. Still, so far, in 2021, it is up a whopping 5,818%.

With a market cap of $44 billion, Dogecoin is currently the 7th largest cryptocurrency. Started as a joke in 2013, Doge is based on Shiba Inu dog, which counts Tesla CEO Elon Musk among its fans.

Billionaire Mark Cuban is another fan who yet again came in support of Dogecoin, saying it is all about the community, and that's what makes not only DOGE work but also other cryptocurrencies, making DOGE “spendable, usable, gamified, memified, collectible and fun,” he said.

The fact that people can even get angry at something as elegant and intrinsic as $DOGE just tells me what the direction of max pain is https://t.co/QnMhvRgD2V

— Zhu Su (@zhusu) August 15, 2021

It's not that Cuban prefers DOGE over BTC,

“They are completely different. But to say DOGE doesn’t have a place is wrong.”

As for 5.2 billion DOGE mined every year, “It’s a declining inflation rate,” which is good for the coin because “Finite supply / Scarcity only works for Stores of Value like BTC. Which is one of the reasons BTC will always struggle to be a currency,” said Cuban.

The owner of Dallas Mavericks further talked about how DOGE is really cheap, where $1 can get one 337 DOGE (at current prices) and “have fun as part of a fun community.”

“I would argue that it is cheaper because the time it takes to figure out how to buy it and the cost associated with buying it is much less. You can buy 25c worth on RH (Robinhood) for 25c.”

I don’t pump anything other than Mavs merch. BUT, the DOGEsphere is fun. Their memes are great. They have fun. They make fun of themselves. It’s fun to be part of. https://t.co/wi6I49yMnL

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 15, 2021

The latest discussion began as last week, Cuban announced that they would soon be launching a Mavs summer merch sale with special pricing for those who pay with Dogecoin and said in an interview that dogecoin is the ‘strongest’ cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange.

In response to the Shark Tank investor’s claims, Elon Musk also chimed in with, “I’ve been saying this for a while.”

In a separate tweet, Cuban said while his company allows people to pay in any crypto, 95% of the sales are in DOGE, and while people can argue which crypto is the best, customers have chosen.

“We can argue everything and anything re BTC, but right now DOGE is the people's way to pay. #DOGEFACTS”

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