SoRare, the fantasy sports NFT platform have recently introduced NFTs from the National Basketball Association (NBA) to their product line. Until now, SoRare have had football (soccer) and baseball ones. The premise of the app is owning NFTs of various sports players, earning points based on their real-life performances.
Quick Take:
- In September, SoRare introduced NBA NFTs onto their fantasy sports platform.
- Previously, they had licensing deals with the 30 Major League Baseball teams and over 300 soccer/football teams worldwide.
- In the past day, the platform announced a new feature, ‘Play With Friends’, allowing for managers to compete with their friends across various competitions.
A Brief History of Sorare
Sorare, a French company started in Paris, has grown its name and fortune from their free-to-play soccer-centric fantasy sports meets NFTs game.
Launched in 2019, the game has grown in popularity amongst the soccer/football and NFT communities. Basically, users can buy, sell, or trade a variety of sportspeople as NFTs. These sports players can then earn points and other in-game incentives the users (or Managers, as they’re known in the game), based on their real-life performances.
Following a $600 million Series B investment led by SoftBank, the company were valued at $4.3 billion in September 2021.
Also, they have introduced a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB) in July, a couple of months before they announced their collaboration with the NBA.
The NBA’s Previous NFT Work
Of course, the NBA on Sorare isn’t the league’s first rodeo in the NFT industry. Their partnership with Dapper Labs, NBA Top Shot has been a huge hit. The platform has generated over $1 billion in secondary market sales since its launch in 2020.
With its ‘moments’ NFTs, it saw the initial massive hype of the industry last year – with certain NFTs selling for over a quarter of a million dollars. They worked alongside the league’s biggest stars on marketing campaigns. Many of whom have collected ‘moments’ from them and their teammates and rivals.
Alongside the rest of the industry, Top Shot has seen a dip. Only $200 million from the $1 billion of overall secondary market sales have come in this calendar year.
NBA on Sorare
Sorare have proven time and time again that they are able to generate interest around sports NFTs. Combined with the NBA’s global audience of 650 million, the product is sure to be on people’s radars, both within NFT and sport communities.
Sorare are now the “only officially licensed NFT Fantasy NBA Game.” The company is trusted by world-famous athletes such as Kylian Mbappe and Serena Williams. Surely, some of the world’s biggest basketball stars will be ‘aping in’ soon. Whether it be through playing the game, or getting involved via investing.
What’s cool about Sorare is that they offer free common ‘cards’ to new users in order to start their team. From then, they can build upon that with various levels of cards from ‘limited’ to ‘unique’. The quality of players and value vary as you move up.
Outwith the free cards that users are first offered, people can purchase the rarer cards to add to their team, which come with the benefit of being more likely to score more points per week, due to quality of players.
So far, it has been a fun, exciting game for a community of people who follow basketball and NFTs, and is seemingly growing everyday with Twitter being thrilled over the game so far.
