Spain’s LaLiga to Offer NFTs of Players Through Sorare Partnership

The Spanish Football league LaLiga has partnered with non-fungible token (NFT) platform Sorare to create tokens representing its players, Sorare said in a press release on 9 September.

According to the announcement, the partnership will enable fans of LaLiga to not only trade the newly created NFTs, but also play in fantasy tournaments. The tokens will represent players from the top two divisions of LaLiga — LaLiga Santander (first division) and LaLiga Smartbank (second division) — which includes 20 of the biggest clubs in Spain. The president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, said in a statement:

“At LaLiga we are always looking for innovative ways to offer our fans new and exciting experiences and to broaden the appeal of our competition, the greatest in the world. This partnership with Sorare, the most exciting sports NFT projects 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.”

While this is the first time an entire Spanish league has involved itself with NFT technology, individual clubs in the country — including Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, and others — have already signed partnership agreements with Sorare. The NFT platform also revealed it is planning to sign similar deals with the top 20 leagues around the world by the end if 2022.

Sorare’s goal is to attract more fans of the game by making the fantasy sport aspect of its initiative more engaging. The platform currently allows fans to build a team of five players, represented by NFTs, and enter it in various fantasy football tournaments to earn prizes. The NFTs performance is based on the players real-life performance on the field.

As of late, more and more football leagues are signing contracts with cryptocurrency-based companies. Back in August, the Italian Lega Serie A signed a multi-year partnership with Crypto.com, which became the league’s presenting partner of its Virtual Assistant Referee (VAR) and Goal Line Technology.