Premier League Drafts Multi-Year NFT Licensing Deal with Sorare

After months of deliberation, the Premier League has finally settled on a multi-year NFT licensing deal with Paris-based sports fantasy game platform, Sorare. 

The four-year partnership will give Sorare the license to license to sell digital trading cards from all 20 Premier League clubs. 

Premier League had been choosing the right fit for the NFT licensing deal since last February and shortlisted four platforms (Sorare, Candy Digital, Dapper Labs, and ConsenSys) for an NFT licensing deal worth up to $589 million over a four-year period. 

ConsenSys reportedly won the NFT deal in March 2022 while Dapper Labs was said to have landed the rights to create video NFTs. The deal agreement with Sorare replaces a revised agreement with ConsenSys, which tried to renegotiate the agreement at a lower price following the market slump. 

The deal between one of the biggest sports leagues in the world and Sorare, the biggest sports NFT trading platform, could onboard millions of Premier League fans around the world to Web3 despite the crypto and NFT downturn.

According to CryptoSlam, the average price of a Sorare NFT was $38 in December, down from an all-time high of $238 in March 2021. However, the number of total transactions in January so far has reached a peak not seen before. 

Nicolas Julia, CEO, Sorare said that 87 percent of users on the platform play the game without spending any money. Last November, Sorare had to expand free access as requested by the French National Gambling Authority (ANJ), which raised concerns about gambling addiction, child protection, and money laundering on the platform.

Julia also said that Sorare has “trended very differently from the rest of the space.” The total transaction volume on Sorare reached $500 million last year, almost doubling from $270 million in 2021.

Valued at $4.3 billion in 2021, Sorare is backed by Japan’s SoftBank, as well as star athletes Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, and tennis legend Serena Williams. 

The agreement with the Premier League is the latest in a series of major partnerships for Sorare, which now has more than 280 partnering sports organizations including La Liga, the Bundesliga, AC Milan, Liverpool FC, the Argentinian Football Association, and Major League Baseball.