© Reuters
Investing.com – Sorare, the fantasy soccer game from Paris-based French start-up of the same name, has signed a multi-year deal with the Premier League, the UK’s top soccer league, which involves the league football licenses official player cards.
As part of this exclusive deal, players in the game will be able to purchase and use official, licensed Premier League player cards.
Startup Sorare, which has 3 million users worldwide, lets people compete in five-a-side football team management games. The chances of success are based on the real-time performance of the players on the field.
Sorare said it is also launching two new features in the game. These are the ability to compete with league-specific player cards and a “financial fair play” feature that prevents users from select star teams.
Sky News earlier reported the deal was worth £30million. Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia declined to give details on the financial terms and duration of the deal.
Note that this partnership comes after a sharp drop in the NFT market as part of the crypto winter. However, Julia said that Sorare has “followed a very different trend from the rest of space”.
Indeed, total card trades on the platform amounted to $500 million in 2022, almost double the $270 million recorded in 2021.
It should be noted that Sorare is the third largest collector of NFTs in the world, according to data from CryptoSlam. The company processes approximately $1 million in transactions every day.
The Premier League’s partnership with Sorare comes on top of other deals, with the company previously announcing partnerships with Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association.
Finally, it should be noted that the French startup was last valued by investors at $4.3 billion in September 2021, and counts among its investors the Japanese company SoftBank and the venture capital companies Accel and Benchmark. Sports stars Lionel Messi, Serena Williams and Kylian Mbappé are also among its shareholders.