The Premier League wants to make football stars as NFTs in a £30m-a-year deal
According to a recent report, the UK Premier League is in talks with two NFT companies about a project to mint soccer-themed tokens. The deal could be worth as much as £30m per year.
The Premier League collaborates with Sorare
The Premier League is reportedly negotiating a deal worth £30m a year with French company Sorare. The program will most likely involve minting NFTs based on images of famous players that will be sold as unique digital memorabilia to fans.
According to a report, the Premier League has planned a meeting with Britain’s major football clubs such as Tottenham and Manchester City. If an agreement is reached between the organization and the clubs, the multi-year agreement can be closed within weeks.
Sorare is a Paris-based company founded in 2018. It has the backing of Kylian Mbappe, a French soccer player, and Japan’s SoftBank. Sorare is also responsible for a blockchain-based football-themed card video game of the same name that launched in 2019.
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Premier League and football-themed NFTs
Sorare is neither the first nor the only crypto firm to negotiate with the Premier League. The current £30m deal with the French company replaced an older deal with ConsenSys. The deal with ConsenSys was reported to be worth as much as £400 million.
Due to the ongoing “crypto winter” causing severe problems for NFT markets with year-on-year volume falling by 68%, ConsenSys attempted to renegotiate the deal. The Premier League scrapped the deal in favor of one with Sorare which it reportedly called more lucrative.
According to the same report, the Premier League is also in talks with another NFT company. Dapper Labs also already has some sports-related experience due to its August deal with Ticketmaster to envision NFL memorabilia in the form of non-fungible tokens.
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About the author
Tim Fries is the co-founder of The Tokenist. He has a B. Sc. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Tim served as a Senior Associate in the investment team at RW Baird’s US Private Equity division and is also a co-founder of Protective Technologies Capital, an investment firm specializing in sensing, protection and control solutions.
