The Spanish league will make every player in Spain’s top soccer league La Liga into an NFT. The digital cards are based on NFTs for each player that will be sold and traded online, and clubs will receive royalties from the NFT sales.
La Liga announced it had inked a deal with fantasy soccer platform Sorare to launch the NFTs. Sorare allows users on its platform to trade digital player cards and manage teams of five in several fantasy football tournaments. According to the deal, La Liga will add top players from Atlético Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann, Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior and FC Barcelona’s Pedri to its platform. Sorare CEO and co-founder Nicolas Julia said:
“Today is a huge milestone for us because it’s the first top-five league joining the platform.”
Lionel Messi’s welcome package
La Liga joins a growing list of sports associations that have joined the NFT craze. The National Basketball Association was among the first such associations to license game highlights as digital collectibles called NBA Top Shot, developed by Dapper Labs. English soccer club Manchester City already dropped two collections of non-fungible tokens. Last August, French club Saint-Germain included the French club’s fan token as part of Lionel Messi’s welcome package.
Click here to find out more about Sorare
Several other soccer clubs have also launched fan tokens that enable holders to vote on minor club decisions and receive some perks. Fans can vote in non-binding polls regarding the future of their clubs on the Socios website. The clubs under Sorare’s stable enjoying Socios include Juventus, AC Milan, Liverpool FC, Paris Saint-Germain FC, Real Madrid, and every Major League Soccer player is an NFT.
Blockchain technology is making inroads into the world of soccer
Sorare already has partnerships with several other soccer clubs besides La Liga. The firm is licensed to mint NFTs for most of the leading 100 soccer clubs worldwide. La Liga president Javier Tebas said in a press release:
“This partnership with Sorare, the most exciting sports NFT project 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.”
Apart from NFTs, Socios is the other form of blockchain technology that is making inroads into the world of soccer. Socios mint fungible fan tokens for clubs that enable fans to access exclusive VIP rewards. NFT sales have hit a fever pitch lately, with a piece by Beeple going for over $69 million last March and VISA buying a collectible called CryptoPunk for $165,000.
Tom is a freelance writer with over 10-years’ experience in content creation, blog writing, and SEO specializing in the blockchain and cryptocurrency niche. As a philosophical figurehead, he believes that to make our world a better place, we must invest in incorruptible products and procedures, of which Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are leading examples.
