- Sorare is a crypto-based fantasy sports game that allows players to earn rewards by participating in its tournaments to win digital trading cards.
- The value of the tokenized card, representing a sportsperson, is generated by the athlete’s real-life on-pitch performance.
- The game has licensed NFTs of digital versions of global teams, clubs and players in football, basketball and baseball.
Sorare is an online fantasy sports game where players can participate in NFT trading activities. It merges a traditional fantasy soccer game with the crypto world through digital trading cards. These cards are tokenized and minted on the Ethereum blockchain.
For building their lineup, i.e., a team of soccer, basketball or baseball players, depending on the game they choose to play for them, the players will need to purchase these digital cards. The cards represent footballers, basketballers and baseballers from around the world across all the premier as well as minor clubs.
The players are allowed to own and sell these NFTs as rare digital collectibles and earn profits without necessarily participating in the game. Hence, the NFT aspect is applicable outside of the game as well.
What is the Game and How Does it Work?
In the online game, the player assumes the role of a team manager and deploys players by buying NFT cards. However, for beginners, free cards are also available to participate in casual tournaments. Like any other traditional fantasy sports game, points are awarded to the players based on their chosen athletes’ real-life on-field performances in the tournaments they participate in.
The company was founded by French video game developers Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort in 2018. Launched initially as a football fantasy game, it now includes basketball and baseball as well. It has received funding from many high-profile athletes, such as Andre Schurrle, Gerard Pique, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Serena Williams.
It features over 300 international football clubs, all 30 teams in the North American basketball league, the National Basketball Association (NBA) and all 30 teams in the North American baseball league, Major League Baseball, that are all licensed (both players and the teams) to be used and labeled for the online game.
The digital cards are NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain. The players who own them have true digitally tokenized ownership, with every card accounted for and very securely traceable. To own the cards, the players can either participate in the tournaments to win them or buy the available ones on the platform’s NFT marketplace.
Players compete to catch hold of cards of athletes with higher scores as they can be sold in secondary markets to generate value. Athletes gain scores based on a predefined scoring matrix of Sorare, which attributes scores to the real-life on-pitch performance of the athletes in the sports season.
How to Play Sorare?
Sorare offers a wide variety of tournaments for players to participate in. The tournaments are usually a week-long affair, consisting of a set of challenges and competitions that the players play with their lineup. The challenges and competitions are announced within a monthly calendar released by the game.
By winning these tournaments, players earn rewards beyond the digital trading cards, such as Ethereum coins, merchandise, match tickets and certain other VIP experiences.
The players can play with a squad of five athletes (digital cards) they select to play from their lineup. After signing up for the game, a player gets five free cards, which represent athletes randomly generated by the game. Then, the player participates in the ‘Casual League’, which is a casual tournament that does not correspond to the athletes’ real-life performances.
These tournaments help the players win actual tokenized trading cards of athletes, which will correspond to their real-life sports performances. The players can also buy tokenized trading cards as NFTs on the marketplace to start participating in the actual tournaments.
It is important to note that the free cards are not tokenized and, hence, are not NFTs. They will always remain within the user’s account and cannot be traded or sold in the secondary market.
The Company’s Market and Future
Sorare is different from the other popular sports-based NFT collection, NBA Top Shot, which is only a digital collectible. Sorare makes the NFT collection interactive through a fantasy sports game based on real-life events.
The game has gained over 3 Million users since its launch. The fantasy sports market is projected to grow to as much as $48.6 Billion by the year 2027. The company is already endorsed by high-profile sports personalities as their brand ambassadors, such as Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
The company has also launched an NFT collection, Legends, in September 2021 as part of its strategy to go beyond a fantasy sports game. It features tradable digital collectibles of famous football moments from retired footballers such as Iker Casillas, Ronaldo Nazario, Fabio Cannavaro and Javier Zanetti.
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