Blockchain Fantasy Football Game ‘Sorare’ Signs Deal with USA Major League Soccer

Sorare has signed yet another football league to its non-fungible token (NFT) fantasy football game. US Major League Soccer (MLS) is the first American league to join the platform for digital football collectibles.

Football leagues across the globe are jumping on the NFT train by enabling a new level of participation and interaction with fans, with the novel technology gaining a lot of traction among sports fans and clubs.

As outlined in an MLS post, Sorare will become the league’s official fantasy football NFT game, adding new players to the fantasy league roster:

MLS Has Youth on its Side

According to Chris Schlosser, MLS senior vice-president of enterprise ventures, “I think [digital] collectibles on their own are a really exciting opportunity, but generally, we’re starting to see more and more in this NFT-as-utility space where people want to use their NFTs to do things, and that’s what Sorare figured out early on.”

MLS is one of the fastest-growing football leagues in the US and has one of the youngest fan bases (average 39.6 years) of any major sports league in the US. According to an article by Forbes, millennials and gen-Zers account for 58 percent of MLS supporters, making NFTs a smart move to get in with the tech-savvy crowd.

US League Joins European Heavyweights

MLS will be joining more than 230 global football leagues, including European heavyweights Bundesliga, Laliga, and Bayern Munich. The platforms’ 350k monthly users across 184 countries will now be able to also collect and use NFTs from the MLS league.

Sorare is a fantasy football game built on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. The platform opens doors for users to buy, sell and trade NFTs of their favourite players to build their fantasy team. Scores are tracked based on real-life performances, and players win prizes based on their rank in the league.

The platform’s last funding round in late September 2021 saw it raise US$680 million, boosting its total valuation to US$4.3 billion.

We’re excited to continue our progressive approach to bring NFTs to MLS with industry-leader Sorare. Utilizing the latest technology to provide fans the opportunity to add MLS players and future stars to their personal collections and give them an interactive free-to-play fantasy soccer game made Sorare the obvious choice.

Chris Schlosser, SVP of emerging ventures, Major League Soccer