An extensive multi-year partnership between the English Premier League and the industry-leading fantasy football company Sorare has been announced. Licensed by the Premier League, these NFTs can be used by Sorare players, according to a CNBC report.
Sorare announced (1) the addition of two new features while commenting on the contract that grants the Premier League the right to license official player cards.
The $4.3 billion business based in Paris has announced several innovations, including using league-specific player cards and a “financial fair play” component in its fantasy soccer games.
According to Sorare, everyone plays on an equitable playing field because the fair play rule bans users from picking all-star teams to battle against.
Initially, the partnership between Sora and the Premier League emerged in the wake of the League’s failed negotiations with ConsenSys.
In October of last year, the Premier League and Sorare began discussing the possibility of a license agreement. With the partnership between the two platforms now official, Sorare’s CEO, Nicolas Julia, discussed the next steps in the negotiation process.
According to Julia, difficulties in finalizing the license deal between the fantasy soccer firm and the highest-level English men’s soccer league contributed to the delay in launching the product. The Premier League’s delay was caused by their current NFT license agreement with another platform.
Sky News stated (2) the sale was worth £30 million, although Julia did not comment on the agreement’s details. In October last year, a British free-to-air television news program and organization hinted at an approaching deal involving Sorare and Premier League.
The top English football league reportedly met with representatives from its twenty-member teams.
Sky News reported in October 2022 that the Premier League’s talks with ConsenSys had broken down, leading to the Sorare development. Given the fall in NFT values, the private blockchain software technology firm had hoped to negotiate a sale at a lower price. However, executives from Premier League clubs viewed the Sorare deal as more profitable than ConsenSys’ updated offer.
NFT Market Under the Grip of Severe Winter
Whether or whether the current Sorare-Premier League transaction is lucrative comes at a time when both the value of NFTs and the volume of trades are plummeting. Several economic factors contributed to the general downward trend in crypto currency prices during most of 2018.
During the past few months, the dramatic and unexpected demise of the once-dominant exchange FTX has exacerbated this period, dubbed as crypto winter.
CryptoSlam reported that in December of last year, the average selling price of an NFT was $143.22. This marked a significant 63% decrease when compared to the same month the previous year.
To put this in context, the average selling price of NFTs in December 2021 was $383.73. Even NFT trading volumes are in the dumps, with December sales falling 78% to $678.2 million from a heady $3.1 billion a year earlier.
Julia notes that Sorare has “trended extremely unlike the rest of the space.” The CEO of Sorare claims that the value of all card transactions will increase to $500 million in 2022, up from $270 million in 2021.
However, there has been a movement in player preference toward the fantasy soccer platform’s “free-to-play” version. They won’t have to go up against players who bought better cards in this setting.
Sorare’s previously announced partnerships include the NBA, MLB, and Premier League.
