After cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are the next big deal, and since they went mainstream, the industry has made impressive achievements. Sorare, a blockchain-based fantasy soccer game has raised more than a million dollars in funding. According to the company, the sum of $680 million was raised and the funding was led by venture capital investor Softbank. England’s Rio Ferdinand and Spain’s Gerard Pique also invested in the company. The company mentioned on Tuesday that the investment raises the company’s valuation to $4.3 billion.
Sorare is like any other online sports platform but the difference is that it is based on a blockchain and in-game tokens are traded in form of NFTs. It was founded in 2018 and is an online gaming platform where players purchase cards that have been licensed and represent soccer players. Players on the platform can build teams and play games against each other with the outcome based on the performance of players in real-life games. In other words, these cards are cryptocurrency assets and are traded in the form of NFTs.
The NFT market continues to boom attracting the interest of investors like SoftBank. Speaking about the funding, the President of SoftBank Group International – Michael Combes, in an email statement said that “We think NFTs represent a new paradigm in the collectability, usability, and engagement with assets. This evolution from physical assets to digital assets is very powerful, and creates a lot of exciting potential business models”.
According to NFT platform Nonfungible.com, Sorare is the biggest sports NFT platform by sales volume. Sorare’s CEO said that the company saw huge potentials in sport-based NFTs and decided to shoot for it. “We saw immense potentials that blockchain and NFTs brought to unlock a new way for football clubs, footballers, and their fans to experience a deeper connection with each other. We believe that this is a huge opportunity to create the next sports entertainment giant”, she said.
Sorare has also declared that it plans on expanding into other sports in the future. It is pertinent to know that this is SoftBank’s first-ever investment in Sorare and the investment was done through its Vision 2 Fund.
