Sorare an NFT fantasy platform on 21st September 2021, bags $680 million in its Series B funding led by Softbank.
Sorare is a French firm that sells football trading cards in the form of NFT announced on 21st September that it has successfully raised over $680 million in funding.
It is one of the largest Series B funding in Europe. With this funding, Sorare current valuation reaches $4.3 billion.
Football fans use the NFT based cards to make teams and play on the Sorare platform. Players and fans can buy or sell cards at auction to other players.
Since January 2021 Sorare has claimed to trade cards worth over $150 million. Sorare has a partnership with 180 football teams including big names like Real Madrid, Juventus and Liverpool. Currently, it has over 600,000 registered users on the platform.
NFT or Non-fungible tokens are a kind of digital asset that one can buy or sell. Similar to cryptocurrency the record of owners is stored in the blockchain network. The data is maintained through the shared network over thousands of computers across the globe.
NFT asset is witnessing tremendous growth this year. Sorare aims to take this further and make a multi-billion dollar NFT fantasy sports industry. In 2019 U.S. topped the fantasy sports market with $8.4 billion.
The intermixing of two new emerging concepts – fantasy sports and NFT, seems interesting. However, journalists and sports fan organizations have shown their concern over the mix of sports with digital-asset.
NFT industry has to face a lot of challenges if it has to grow into something big. The first challenge is to maintain such a large network of Blockchain efficiently. Blockchain requires advanced technology for significant computing power with a carbon footprint. Another risk factor is the lack of regulations that opens up the scope for illegal practices.
