Somehow there was (in the sense that there was some team), even if there was not officially as a league. But now this gap has been filled: from the 2022/23 season, also the Lega Serie A joins the Sorare platform, the startup born in 2018 and which somehow invented fantasy football combined with blockchain and NFTs.
The two companies have signed one partnership multi-year that will allow fans, collectors and players to buy and exchange the digital cards of perhaps the best known and most admired teams and players in the world, then virtually competing with the teams they will compose. Nicolas Julia, co-founder and current CEO of Sorarerevealed that “Italy is currently the fastest growing market for us” and that “Italians are our second community globally”.
Serie A is the 12th major football league in the world to collaborate with Sorare, after the Bundesliga German, the Liga Spanish and US Major League Soccer; last spring, moreover, Sorare opened for the first time to other sports, signing an agreement with the Major League baseball, also in the USA.
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How to play (and what to win) on Sorare
Sorare members create formations made up of 5 players (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, forward and winger) that can be deployed in different tournaments, each with its own entry requirements: based on the performance of the players in real matches, you know who has won and who has lost and you go to compose a ranking.
Michael Meltzer, Sorare’s Head of Business Development, explained to us that “you don’t need to spend money to start”, because “free player cards are made available upon registration to organize your team” and participate in one of the initial tournaments. Each card is an NFT, and clearly they are not all free: some are rarer than others (in the sense that they are made in a smaller number of copies) and therefore more expensive and you can buy them either using cryptocurrencies or paying with a credit card. Meltzer reminded us that “there are many football tournaments on Sorare: there is one worldwide, there are some clubs, others reserved for the under 23” and that “usually a couple of games are played a week”.
What happens if you win? Mostly: what do you win? “You get rewards from week to weekin the form of cards of other players “, who will be” better (rarer, ed) the higher you are in the ranking of your tournament “. At that point” you can decide whether sell youby cashing the crypto or having the money credited to your credit card, or if use them to strengthen your team. “If you decide to keep it, the card remains with the player forever, and can be used as long as the player it is paired with remains active and is deployed in some team included in the Sorare platform.
There is not only this, because one of the interesting aspects is the possibility of win prizes in the real world: “In the past few years, our users have won tickets to go to the stadium to see their favorite team or to participate in experiences with their favorite players.” For example, “last season, together with La Liga, we gave away tickets for Real Madrid-Barcelona which included the possibility of meeting the players and spending time with them and also the transfer by plane “.
In short, it is not difficult to imagine something like this for our country too, perhaps an experience linked to Inter-Juventus, the so-called derby of Italy: “All the Serie A teams will arrive on Sorare from autumn, with the start of the new championship – confirmed Meltzer – And together with the teams and leaders of the League we are defining specific prizes that concern them, and which we will announce in the next weeks “.
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Serie A: “From next season, the first collections”
As we understand, some of the prizes will depend on what the Serie A League wants to do and organize: “Sorare uniquely combines fantasy football gaming with collectible NFT cards and this allows us to bring younger fans closer to football – he explained. Luigi De Siervo, managing director of Serie A – It is a partnership with great potential, and we are ready to launch the first collections for the 2022-23 season ”.
Listed over $ 4 billion, Sorare has today more than 2 million users worldwideworks in collaboration with 260 sports organizations and has among the investors and testimonials also the tennis player Serena Williams (who has a seat on the board), Gerard Piqué, Rio Ferdinand and pure Kylian Mbappe.