Sorare has built a fantasy football (soccer) platform where each digital player card is a unique NFT registered on the Ethereum blockchain. Players buy, sell and trade cards and can manage squads that earn points based on real-life performances. The company has signed partnerships with 180 football organizations, including Real Madrid, Liverpool and Juventus, creating a significant competitive barrier to entry. Sorare generates revenue by issuing new cards on the platform; it does not currently take a cut on player-to-player transactions. Trading volume is material: $150 million worth of cards have been traded since January, and sales grew 51x between Q2 2020 and Q2 2021. The platform reports 600,000 registered users and 150,000 users who buy a card or compose a team each month, and plans include expanding to new sports, opening a U.S. office, hiring, and increased marketing and partnership activity. Sorare offers a fantasy football experience built on tradable digital cards backed by the Ethereum blockchain to create digital scarcity via non-fungible tokens. Users manage favorite players, enter collective fantasy contests, and can transfer cards across games thanks to blockchain-backed portability. The company has launched digital cards with more than 120 football clubs, including Liverpool, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Juventus. Sorare was founded in 2018 and is led by CEO Nicolas Julia. It is already profitable and has seen 52% month-on-month growth over the past 12 months, with card trading volume rising from €50K in January 2020 to €3.5M in January 2021 across 120 countries. The company plans to use the new funding to grow its community, accelerate hiring and launch a mobile application. Sorare operates a fantasy-football platform where managers buy, trade and play with licensed digital player cards issued in limited editions via blockchain. Launched in December 2019 and based in Paris, the product combines football fantasy mechanics with collectible digital cards and club licensing. In its first year Sorare onboarded more than 100 clubs across 10 countries, including Bayern Munich, Porto, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus. By November 2020 the platform had attracted over 55,000 users and recorded a sales volume of more than €1.2 million. The company positions itself as a new revenue stream and deeper fan engagement channel for clubs and plans to expand agreements with leagues, clubs and players. Founders Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort have attracted venture investors such as Partech and Cassius and active-player investors including André Schürrle and Gerard Piqué. Sorare is a Paris-based fantasy football platform that uses blockchain to enable trading of officially licensed digital player cards. The platform runs on the Ethereum blockchain to record card ownership and secure digital scarcity. Users buy and sell cards ranked by real-match performance in an online marketplace. The company reported revenue growth from $30,000 in December 2019 to $350,000 in June 2020 and has sold over $1 million worth of cards across 50 countries; it is already profitable. Over 90 clubs, including Juventus, Atletico, and Olympique Lyonnais, have partnered with Sorare, and the company plans to finalize licensing deals with five leagues and 150 clubs by year-end. The new funding will be used to scale the team to meet rapid growth. Sorare is a crypto-based football card trading and gaming platform that lets users collect player cards, trade them, and play in a gaming arena. The platform uses Ethereum standards to ensure each player card cannot be copied, securing digital scarcity. Sorare has launched a private beta which has recorded several thousands of auctions. The startup signed a licensing partnership with the Belgian professional football league Pro League, becoming the first licensed company to distribute cryptocards of football players. Sorare completed a pre-seed financing of over €500k and intends to use the funds to hire designers and engineers. The company plans to launch a public version before the end of 2019 and expects to close additional partnerships with major professional football leagues.

Total raised

$737M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Sep 2021