The Premier League and Sorare, a $4.3 billion fantasy soccer game, have agreed to a multi-year agreement under which the Premier League will license official player cards, as per a report by CNBC on Monday, Jan. 30.
According to the exclusive multi-year arrangement, game users will be allowed to buy and utilize NFTs with a Premier League license.
Sorare co-founder and CEO Nicolas Julia speaks during an interview on the opening day of the Web Summit in Lisbon on November 1, 2021. - Europe's largest tech event Web Summit is held at Parque das Nacoes in Lisbon from November 1 to November 4.
Fantasy Soccer Game
Five-a-side fantasy soccer competitions are offered by the Paris-based firm Sorare, which boasts 3 million players globally.
According to Sorare, the game will also introduce two new features. These consist of the option to participate in competition using playing cards specific to leagues and a "financial fair play" function that prohibits users from choosing all-star teams.
In October 2022, there were rumors that Sorare and the Premier League were in negotiations for a licensing deal.
Nicolas Julia, CEO of Sorare, said that the deal took a lot of time to be sealed since Premier League already had an NFT licensing agreement with another company at the time.
However, the larger picture of the crypto market must not be ignored. In 2022, the industry was rocked by bankruptcies from several exchanges, including FTX, and other problems.
Hence, CNBC notes that there is a significant decline in NFT trading.
Crypto Winter
The crypto winter has resulted in a massive slump in crypto values. Experts say it was recently made worse by the collapse of FTX.
The average selling price of an NFT in December 2022 was $143.22, which has significantly decreased by 63% from $383.73 in December 2021, according to the data website CryptoSlam.
With total NFT sales falling 78% in December to $678.2 million from $3.1 billion a year earlier, trading volumes also plunged dramatically.
Sorare, according to Julia, has trended differently from the others. The network had $500 million in total card transactions in 2022, nearly double the $270 million in 2021.
However, the company has noted a change in usage, with players preferring the "free-to-play" mode, where they are not up against cards that have been purchased. Julia claims that 87% of Sorare users do not make purchases.
According to CryptoSlam data, Sorare has the third-largest NFT collection globally since approximately $1 million worth of transactions is processed by the company every day.
CNBC notes that the Premier League's collaboration with Sorare is the latest in a string of agreements between sports leagues and crypto exchanges.
Deals with the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have already been made public by Sorare.
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