Barnsley chairman admits HEX.com regrets

English football club were forced to pull the plug on crypto deal due to offensive social media posts.

Barnsley Football Club chairman Neerav Parekh has admitted the decision to award HEX.com its front-of-shirt-sponsorship was a mistake.

The English Football League side are in dire straits following their relegation last summer and welcomed the arrival of the cryptocurrency site in the summer as a major partner.

However, the deal went south quickly and was ended after a week following an investigation into homophobic and other offensive tweets sent by people linked to HEX.

Parekh said: “It was a mistake the club made, but the people at the club deserve credit for working 24/7 as soon as this was realised and addressing it in three to four days. Mistakes will be made, but it’s the reaction to those mistakes that is important.”

Barnsley Football Club CEO Khaled El-Ahmad said: “Hex came to the table through a third-party agency and we did the due diligence that we thought was good enough, but in retrospect wasn’t as thorough as it should have been.

“There was a certain assumption of trust, which ultimately wasn’t good enough, because of the partners they had worked with elsewhere. We considered Hex because it was a chance to be innovative, to look at working with crypto, and we could see clubs like Inter Milan getting involved.

“However, the club never knew of the individual people as Hex was presented to us by a third party as a company. When that came to light that was news to everyone and the club acted straight away.”

The collapse of that deal has in part left them in desperate need of cash with the board having made a call for a cash injection of more than £3m.

Despite off-field issues, Barnsley have made a strong start to the League One season, sitting fifth in the table just five points adrift of table-topping Plymouth Argyle.

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Written by David Kent

David has more than a decade of sports betting and sports writing experience working with some of the biggest names in the industry. He focuses on articles covering these subjects including how crypto is transforming sportsbooks.

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