French Football Federation launches official player NFTs with Sorare

Les Bleus players and their sports stats will be tokenized on the blockchain for trading and playing in fantasy games.

With the Euro 2020 championship in progress, blockchain-based fantasy soccer game Sorare has announced the licensing agreement for a national sports association to issue nonfungible tokens of its players.

In an announcement today, Sorare said the France Football Federation, or FFF, had launched its own line of player nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, prior to the team’s match against Germany on Tuesday. The French National Team — often called “The Blues” for the color of their shirts — is currently competing in the 2020 Union of European Football Associations European Football Championship. The Euro 2020 tournament was postponed last year due to the pandemic.

The firm will tokenize France national team players including Antoine Griezmann, Paul Pogba, and Hugo Lloris as digital cards for the 2020 season. With their performance stats recorded on the blockchain, player cards will each have different scores and rarity for the fantasy football game.

Winner of the European Football Championship in 1984 and 2000, France is reportedly one of the first national football associations to make a licensing agreement for official digital collectibles. However, Sorare said it was “in active discussion” to onboard other associations across the globe.

Sorare said it had sold more than $70 million in digital cards since January and currently has 90,000 monthly active users from 140 countries. Residents of more than 200 countries play football — or soccer, as it’s called in the United States and a few other nations.

“We’ve onboarded the World Champions: the French team,” said Sorare CEO Nicolas. “It is the first of many football associations that will be joining us in the coming weeks and months.”