Chelsea sold Trevoh Chalobah to Italian club Como for €30 million in late July. The English defender was excluded from Chelsea's preseason squad weeks earlier. Como, backed by Indonesian billionaires and featuring Cesc Fàbregas and Thierry Henry among minority owners, initially bid between €23 and €28 million before matching Chelsea's asking price.
The London club needed cash. Offloading fringe players has become part of the strategy to fund new signings. For Como, Chalobah represents a statement move toward mid-table stability in Serie A after years of rebuilding.
Where crypto fits in
Chelsea has been running a sponsorship deal with crypto exchange BingX since January 2024, renewed again in June 2026. It is now one of the longest-running crypto partnerships in the Premier League. Como launched an NFT charity collection back in 2022, testing digital assets as supplementary revenue.
Neither club used actual cryptocurrency to execute this transfer. But the financial ecosystems around both sides are increasingly linked to digital assets. For exchanges like BingX, Premier League visibility still moves the needle as marketing spend. For clubs like Como, NFTs and blockchain partnerships offer revenue streams that traditional football finance could never reach.
The pattern is becoming clearer. Crypto firms want football's massive global audience. Clubs want the money. The result is a reshaping of how transfers get funded and structured, even when the transaction itself stays in euros and bank wires.
This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial or investment advice.
