Three fascinating things have recently happened:
- Connexa Sports (NASDAQ: YYAI) just rebranded to Airwa Technologies after a $100M blockchain investment announcement.
- Brera Holdings (NASDAQ: SLMT), once a micro-cap “sports ownership platform,” rebranded around Solana treasury management, raising $300M.
- Signing Day Sports (NYSE: SGN), a digital recruiting platform, is merging with a crypto entity to “expand globally through tokenized operations.”
These may signal a market size issue in the sports industry….
But I mainly think this is just a state of the market. Let’s look at what’s going on, revisit crypto in sports, and make some predictions.
Diving In 👇
High Level of Recent Sports to Crypto Moves
We’ve seen this movie before:
- 2021: SPACs and the metaverse.
- 2023: AI and predictive analytics.
- 2025: Blockchain treasuries.
Connexa, Brera, and Signing Day all started out as sports companies. Although all of them were modest in size, they went public.
I think it’s fair to generalize and say…
- 2/3 were struggling to find PMF in sports.
- All three found “more liquidity” once they attached themselves to crypto narratives.
Each is borrowing legitimacy (public markets, sports branding) while trying to ride the narrative momentum of crypto/Solana.
The differences matter:
- one is tokenization heavy
- one is treasury/infrastructure heavy
- one is mining/infrastructure + legacy hybrid
Let’s explore each in more detail.
1. Connexa Sports (now AiRWA)
Connexa Sports built radar, camera, and analytics tech for racquet sports.
Revenue? Flat. Narrative? Stale.
So they did what any ambitious micro-cap might do in 2025…rebrand as a Web3 infrastructure company.
Now called AiRWA Technologies, they’ve secured a $100M blockchain investment (including 150,000 Solana tokens) to launch AiRWA Exchange, a tokenization marketplace for real-world assets.
Their stock popped 30% after hours on the news. “Tokenization” is Wall Street’s favorite word right now.
Profluence Take:
This move shows how sports tech can morph into fintech storytelling.
If crypto runs, this pivot looks genius. If not, it’s a headline play for liquidity. Either way, Connexa found a narrative more exciting than sports equipment.
2. Brera Holdings (now Solmate)
Brera Holdings, once a roll-up of soccer clubs, just rebranded as Solmate, a Solana-focused digital asset treasury company.
They raised $300 million from UAE investors, ARK Invest, RockawayX, and the Solana Foundation to build a Solana treasury + validator infrastructure operation.
They’ll hold, stake, and operate nodes…essentially turning a sports holding company into a publicly traded Solana ecosystem play.
The stock? Ran from $6 to $30 in two weeks.
Profluence Take:
Brera’s transformation to Solmate shows how sports assets, once slow and illiquid, can suddenly become narrative leverage in the right macro environment.
They’re keeping their sports clubs for now, but the scoreboard they’re now watching is the price of Solana. It will be interesting to see how they merge together.
3. Signing Day Sports to One Blockchain
Signing Day Sports was supposed to help high school athletes get recruited. Now, it’s helping mine Bitcoin.
The company announced a business combination with One Blockchain, a crypto mining and digital infrastructure firm running 40MW of operations in South Carolina.
Overnight, a low-revenue sports platform became a profitable digital asset operator with power, compute, and crypto exposure.
One Blockchain generated $26.8M in revenue last year. That’s more cash than most sports tech firms on Nasdaq combined.
Profluence Take:
Signing Day brings the ticker and brand; One Blockchain brings the business.
It’s the cleanest version of a reverse takeover masked as a sports merger.
By early 2026, it will essentially be a public crypto miner wearing a sports jersey…and in this market, that might be enough to stay alive.
Looking Ahead
Let’s call it what it is…
The sports-to-crypto trend is a symptom of a capital-starved sector:
- Micro-cap sports companies have slower growth right now.
- Crypto, on the other hand, has liquidity and a stronger narrative.
Connexa, Brera, and Signing Day repackaged themselves to catch the current capital rotation (and I expect more micro-cap sports companies to do the same over the next few months).
Every cycle, the story changes, but the incentive stays the same: Find the liquidity, build the narrative, and survive the winter.
Sports doesn’t die, it just rebrands.
*Note: I’m having the Executive Chairman from Brera Holdings (who’s also a member of Profluence) on the podcast next week, so that will give us all more context.
