Web3.0 fantasy football startup, Sorare has inked a functional partnership with the English Premier League as it seeks to extend its global footprint in the world of sports. According to a report from CNBC, the partnership will enable users of the Sorare platform to make use of Premier League-licensed digital collectibles or Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) under the exclusive multi-year agreement.
Though the financial details of the partnership were not unveiled by either party, it was pegged at around £30 million per Sky Sports reports. The partnership comes as a major complement to Sorare’s prior partnerships with other top leagues including the Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Sorare is a sporting app that lets users play fantasy football in which they select a team of 5 and earns performance scores and ratings based on the real-life performance of the players. Since its inception, Sorare currently boasts around 3 million users. While it offers its services for free, its revenue generation model involves users conducting real financial transactions from which it takes a cut as fees.
Sorare is growing in its influence as a preferred fantasy app destination. The platform is valued at around $4.3 billion as of September and it boasts the highest-profile investors in the industry as its backers. These include but are not limited to Softbank, Accel, Kylian Mbappe, and Serena Williams.
Staying Afloat Amid Crypto Winter
Sorare is primarily a crypto-based startup whose growth and resilience at this time have relatively defied the general trend in the broader digital currency ecosystem. In what is now recognized as one of the worst crypto winters in the industry’s history, Sorare still traded over $840,000 in NFTs sales over the past 24 hours according to data from CryptoSlam.
Over the past year, crypto firms are known to ink strategic partnerships with major sporting firms. Since the collapse of FTX Derivatives Exchange, the trading platform’s mega-million naming rights with the Staples Center arena in Los Angeles and the Miami-Dade Arena have hit the rocks.
Sorare’s Chief Executive Officer, Nicolas Julia said the company has been largely insulated because it makes its deal with a focus on intellectual properties and not necessarily for the sake of publicity.
With the sentiment in the broader ecosystem largely low at this time, the Sorare chief is optimistic that it will record additional embrace with the Premier League partnership as will be complemented by other features it plans to add soon.
