English Premier League football game club Manchester City has suspended a partnership with a startup crypto firm after seemingly non doing its due diligence prior to signing.

According to Daily Mail reporter Jack Gaughan, Manchester City is currently "conducting further enquiries" regarding 3key Technologies, the crypto house with which the order inked a deal on November. 12. At the time, the football club said it would be collaborating with 3key to heighten awareness of its reported decentralized finance, or DeFi, trading assay products as a regional partner.

Nonetheless, Manchester City is reportedly backing away from the agreement after online searches as reported by The Guardian revealed that the company's executives had little if any digital footprints, with the information given seemingly unverifiable. Cointelegraph was unable to locate contact data for Ryan Hodder, named as 3key's principal marketing officer in the announcement.

"The closest anyone has come to verified data is a photograph of a man with a ginger beard in a checked suit who may or may non exist 3Key's 'chief growth strategist' Jacob Caine," said Guardian reporter Paul MacInnes.

Though it is possible that 3key is a company providing legitimate services in the DeFi space and its higher-ups are only choosing to keep a low profile online, the lack of available information is suspect. Many loftier-profile figures were duped into promoting scam token projects during the 2022 ICO boom including actor Steven Seagal and boxing promoter Floyd Mayweather. Even so, it is unusual for an organization such as a Premier League football club to publicly denote a partnership with a relatively unknown visitor in the crypto space and then quickly back out without caption.

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Manchester City is reportedly the 6th almost valuable football club in the earth, with an estimated value of $iv billion, according to Forbes. Outside of the 3key agreement, the gild also announced in March it had partnered with fan engagement platform Socios.com to launch a fan token on the Chiliz blockchain.