Friday, December 26th, was the first-ever Bitcoin Bowl football game sponsored by BitPay, a popular Bitcoin processing service for consumers and merchants. BitPay first announced their sponsorship of the St. Petersburg Bowl and partnership with ESPN Events in June this year. While a smaller bowl, the event has been cited to have pulled in 3.3 million viewers.

During the game, the North Carolina State Wolfpack beat the University of Central Florida Knights, 34-27.

BitPay took to the sponsorship stage with a variety of commercials directed at the public using the word bitcoin and tying it directly to financial services. Three BitPay commercials aired during the football game to an audience that is young and enthusiastic.

According to Ashley Wheeler, coordinator for the game, who was cited by WSJ’s BitBeat, more than 100 merchants in the area were accepting Bitcoin payments by the time of the game.

Two of the commercials aired during the Bitcoin Bowl spoke directly to small business users (one of them with a humorous overtone, watch more here) and one that used a staid format of a barber, retailer, and warehouse supervisor speaking to using bitcoin.

BitPay hopes that the “I accept Bitcoin” motto will help educate the public as to the existence of bitcoin and that it will lead small businesses to BitPay to find out if its right for them. As 2014 saw numerous large and small merchants beginning to accept Bitcoin, revenue from bitcoin sales still represents only 1% of most businesses. This represents an extremely large amount for outfits such as Overstock.com and Dell, but it has obvious room to grow.

Bitcoin and sports

Over the past year Bitcoin has made its way into other sports venues by way of sports teams with the Sacramento Kings, an NBA basketball team, and the San Jose Earthquakes, an MLS soccer team, both began accepting bitcoin this year for sports tickets.

The Sacramento Kings began accepting Bitcoin in March of this year, making them the first processional team to accept bitcoins.

President of the San Jose Earthquakes Dave Kaval announced that the team would be accepting bitcoins at their newly built stadium in May of this year. The team partnered with Coinbase to do bitcoin processing for tickets and merchandise at the stadium itself.

Now the Bitcoin Bowl has been played and aired to over 3 million viewers adding football to the ever-growing list of sports-related media that bitcoin has found an audience.