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Players in La Liga’s first and second division will now be available as NFT digital football cards to play and trade in Sorare’s tournaments.
La Liga, the top professional men’s football league in Spain, has partnered with fantasy football platform Sorare to launch NFTs for all of its players.
This means that fans will be able to trade and play with digital cards of the players in La Liga. Containing clubs such as Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid and Valencia CF, partnering with La Liga represents a major gain for Sorare in the virtual football world.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are units of data on a digital ledger, which are verified using blockchain technology. These can be used to represent a unique digital item such as photo files, video clips, the world wide web’s source code or, in this case, a digital football card. These digital cards will be unique, scarce and publicly verifiable using blockchain tech.
In Sorare, users create teams consisting of five players to enter into tournaments in the fantasy game. All entered teams get ranked against one another in a leaderboard, based on the players’ performance in real-life games.
Each football player has corresponding cards to represent them of varying rarities; 100 rare cards, 10 super rare cards and one unique card.
“At La Liga, we are always looking for innovative ways to offer our fans new and exciting experiences and to broaden the appeal of our competition, the greatest in the world,” said Javier Tebas, president of La Liga.
“This partnership with Sorare, the most exciting sports NFT projects today, enables us to reach new audiences globally and gives existing fans additional ways they can get involved with the players and the clubs they love.”
Sorare said that by combining NFT technology with sports cards and a fantasy game, it is trying to establish the next-generation offering within football. It said it plans to partner with each of the world’s top 20 football leagues by the end of 2022.
This new partnership includes both La Liga Santander and La Liga Smartback, the first and second divisions of the league. More than $130m in NFT cards has been sold in 2021 and Sorare has previously established partnerships with clubs such as Liverpool, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain.
Nicolas Julia, CEO and co-founder of Sorare, said: “NFTs are the future of global sports fandom because they allow fans to come together and to feel ownership of the sports they love.
“This partnership isn’t just a sign of Sorare’s growing leadership in the NFT sports space, it is a major signal of intent by the sporting world that it sees Sorare’s unique ability to connect fans with sports through NFTs as a crucial part of their plans for the future.
“La Liga is one of the best leagues in the world, home to some of the most exciting clubs and footballers on earth. We are very proud that they have become our first ever league partnership, and we are looking forward to working together in the years ahead.”
