Sorare has partnered with the French Football Association to launch its first National Team cards on the sports collectibles platform. The French National team, commonly known as Les Bleus, are the current World Champions and include some of the most valuable players in the world.
Since players appear for both their national teams and league teams, there is an overlap of multiple nonfungible token (NFT) cards for the same player. For example, French national team player N’Golo Kante plays for Chelsea, a team in the English Premier League that also has a partnership with Sorare. This is the case for most starters in the French team since they are elite players and Sorare has signed deals with most top teams in Europe.
The National Team cards will exist in addition to the league team player cards. In Sorare’s fantasy football model, each player has a supply of 111 cards per season, including club and national team cards. Five cards from this supply will come from the National Team collection for the French National players, provided the 111 limit has not been reached.
The new cards, which represent the team of the 2020 season, will have the exact same utility as club versions and Sorare players will be able to line up the national team players during fantasy football games.
The cards will launch during the football Euro2020 event, when the French national team is in action. While the players play year-round, some players perform better (or worse) as part of the national team due to dynamics with other players and differing game strategies from their clubs. It is unclear whether a French player’s national team card will have the same value as their club version if their performance on the two teams varies.
Nevertheless, it is an exciting expansion of Sorare’s lineup, and the company seems to have more national team-related announcements in the works. With the football World Cup taking place in December of next year, the question is whether Sorare has the finances to line up all national teams playing in the event and foster a fantasy football game solely based on World Cup games. The fact that a Porsche subsidiary has already signed Germany could make that a challenge.
Sorare has seen tremendous success over the past year. Part of it is making the initial process simple for new players and limiting the crypto knowledge needed to get involved.
The company partnered with crypto app startup Ramp at the end of last year to smooth the purchases on the platform. It also completed a $50 million Series A funding led by Benchmark in February. Meanwhile, Animoca subsidiary nWay will license Olympic pin NFTs.
