Blockchain-based fantasy sports game Sorare reports $350,000 in sales for June

Sorare, a fantasy soccer game and marketplace for blockchain player cards announced an agreement with the Major League Soccer Players Association (MLSPA) that will bring 700 new player cards to the Sorare platform. Sorare player cards are ERC-721 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) meaning they are unique and publicly tradable.

Since the launch in 2019, Sorare has licensed nearly 50 football clubs across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. According to Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia, the firm’s platform currently has about 3,500 monthly active users and recorded over $350,000 in sales for June. More recently, a player card of Cristiano Ronaldo sold for 59 ether. While these sales numbers are shy of the $4 million in revenue that Cryptokitties earned in its first year, Sorare is getting close to My Crypto Heroes which made $1.5 million in its first year.

This is also an interesting case study since Sorare originally launched on top of Loom, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum which has since pivoted. This year, the firm opted to migrate to Ethereum sighting the network’s maturity and growing adoption as a primary reason for the switch.

We have previously written about how some blockchain-based games are finding early product-market fit, such as Gods Unchained which also happens to be a trading card game. Fantasy sports, unlike massive online games like Fortnite, don’t require the same standards of low latency or speed which makes gaming functionality easier to develop.

Why it matters:

• Games such as Gods Unchained and Sorare are showing a successful strategy for crypto gaming companies that want to find product-market fit:

1. Build games that provide added value through NFTs
2. Provide a fun gaming experience while balancing the tradeoffs with what is possible on blockchain networks today

• Blockchain games take a certain amount of platform risk and technology risk when deciding what network to build on and which scaling solutions to utilize. The decision from Sorare to utilize the Ethereum base layer is another small, but positive signal that Ethereum will be useful for gaming or at least the card-game niche.

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