The Sorare NFT soccer trading card game has partnered with the Premier League on a multi-year licensing agreement.
Sorare
Sorare, the $4.3 billion fantasy soccer game, has signed a multi-year deal with the Premier League that will see the world’s top soccer league license official player cards.
Players of the game will be able to purchase and use official Premier League-licensed NFTs under the exclusive multi-year agreement.
Paris-based startup Sorare, which has 3 million users worldwide, lets people compete in fantasy soccer games of five a side. The chances of success are based on the real-time performance of players on the pitch.
Sorare said it’s also launching two new features in the game. These include the ability to compete with league-specific player cards and a “financial fair play” feature that prevents users from selecting all-star teams.
Sorare was first rumored to be in talks with the Premier League — the top tier of England’s men’s soccer leagues — about a licensing agreement in Oct. 2022. Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia said things took longer to wrap up than anticipated as the Premier League had an existing NFT licensing deal with another firm.
Sky News reported earlier that the deal was worth £30 million. Julia declined to share specifics on the financial terms and length of the deal.
The news comes despite a sharp slump in NFT trading activity.
Values of NFTs — or non-fungible tokens — have plummeted amid a downturn in crypto prices known as the “crypto winter,” exacerbated in recent months by the bankruptcy of major exchange FTX.
According to data site CryptoSlam, the average selling price of an NFT in Dec. 2022 was $143.22, down 63% from $383.73 in Dec. 2021.
Trading volumes are also down significantly. Overall NFT sales plunged 78% in December to $678.2 million from $3.1 billion a year ago.
Julia said Sorare has “trended very differently from the rest of the space.” Total exchanges of cards on the platform amounted to $500 million last year, almost…
Read the full article here
