Sorare Inks 4-Year Deal With English Premier League: What Sports And NFT Fans Should Know

Global sports entertainment company Sorare announced a new partnership with the English Premier League. The four-year deal grows on recent partnerships by Sorare and will give the chance to consumers to purchase digital player cards and compete in fantasy football (soccer) challenges.

What Happened: Sorare announced a four-year partnership with the English Premier League on Monday. The partnership follows the successful launches of digital player cards and challenges for both Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association in 2022.

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Under the new deal, Sorare will launch digital cards of players from all 20 English Premier League clubs, bringing one of the largest sports leagues in the world into the portfolio of leagues covered by the sports and entertainment company.

“The way that supporters follow their favorite teams and players is evolving and the Premier League is always looking for ways to engage with fans,” Premier League CEO Richard Masters said.

Along with deals with MLB and the NBA, Sorare has partnerships with soccer leagues that include La Liga, Bundesliga, Major League Soccer and Serie A.

Fans will be able to compete in free-to-play challenges and earn rewards. Fans can buy, sell and collect digital player cards that range in scarcity and value. The digital player cards are part of the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain.

Fans can create a lineup that consists of five players — one goalkeeper, one defender, one midfielder, one forward, and an additional non-goalie. The lineups can be entered by Sorare users (called Managers) in challenges.

Each player has different levels of their digital cards ranging from Common to Unique. The common cards are free and have no limit. Each player has only 1,000 Limited, 100 Rare, 10 Super Rare and 1 Unique digital card available.

Why It’s Important: The English Premier League is the most-watched soccer league in the world. Sorare says the English Premier League is broadcast to 880 million homes in 188 countries.

Sorare CEO and co-founder Nicolas Julia praised the deal with the EPL as something the team has dreamt of since the company was founded.

“It’s a major milestone for us as we pursue our goal to build a compelling global sports community for fans and we’re extremely proud to have now partnered with three of the biggest sports leagues in the world: the Premier League, NBA and MLB,” Julia said.

Comcast Corporation has the rights to broadcast English Premier League games in the U.S. and does so on the NBC network, several cable channels and the Peacock streaming platform.

Sorare could gain new players that are fans of the English Premier League and also gain new fans around the world with marketing aimed at viewers of the matches.

Sorare has over three million users worldwide, according to the company. Sorare counts Softbank, Accel and Benchmark among investors in the company, which was valued at $4.3 billion in its most recent Series B funding round.

Over the last 30 days, Sorare has $22.3 million in sales volume, ranking 7th among all NFT collections, according to data from Cryptoslam. Sorare ranks 13th all-time by sales volume with $527.5 million.

The company also counts athletes Serena Williams, Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane, Rio Ferdinand, Gerard Pique, Blake Griffin and Rudy Gobert as investors, ambassadors and advisors.

Sports leagues and players continue to embrace the rise of non-fungible tokens. The NBA has led the way with partnerships with NBA Top Shot and Sorare. Soccer leagues and players, including the EPL’s Manchester United MANU, have also embraced offering NFTs to offer new ways to connect with fans.

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