Lionel Messi will take part as an investor and brand ambassador in the fantasy NFT collectible soccer game Sorare as per reports.
The Argentine, a striker for the French team Paris Saint-Germain, will aid Sorare in creating new benchmarks for fan interaction with teams and athletes, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Sorare noted that they will collaborate to develop fresh content and fan experiences.
The company stated that Messi has taken an equity position in Sorare as part of the agreement without going into further detail regarding the size of his ownership or other parameters.
The collaboration with Messi, according to Nicolas Julia, the CEO and co-founder of Sorare, was a “huge milestone” for the business.
“We believe Lionel Messi will help us set new standards in how we do this, and we look forward to sharing what new content and fan experiences we’ve been collaborating on soon,” he told CNBC via email.
Sorare enables users to manage five-man teams in fantasy soccer competitions and swap digital player cards. The cards themselves are nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which are digital collectibles with a blockchain-based ownership history. According to Sorare, this makes each card “digitally scarce.”
With more than 2 million members in 185 countries and partnerships with more than 300 sports clubs and leagues, including Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga, the Paris-based startup, with a most recent valuation of $4.3 billion, has more than 2 million users.
Recently, it has broadened beyond its primary concentration on soccer to include other sports, such as baseball and basketball.
“Fans have always looked for ways to express their passion and get closer to the players and teams that they love and Sorare’s combination of a fantasy game with digital collectibles gives fans new ways to do that, wherever they are in the world,” said Messi in a statement on Wednesday.
The collaboration with Sorare is the latest noteworthy agreement between a sports star and a cryptocurrency platform. Both American tennis great Serena Williams and French soccer player Kylian Mbappe have previously established partnerships with Sorare.
Tom Brady, an American football quarterback, purchased stock in the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which on Tuesday agreed to be sold to competitor company Binance due to a liquidity crisis.
As part of his two-year contract with the team, Messi already consented to receive a portion of his pay in $PSG fan tokens, a cryptocurrency created by blockchain sports platform Socios for Paris Saint-Germain.
Since Messi announced the Socios agreement in August 2021, the tokens’ value has fallen dramatically, plunging 86%, which has caused average sports fans who are susceptible to significant price drops to become concerned.
Sorare and the Future of the Market
Sorare, which was created in 2018 by Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort, makes use of the extensive blockchain network of Ethereum. With the use of blockchain technology, Sorare ensures the safety of its gaming platform by allowing users to verify all rare cards on the Ethereum network.
The Sorare corporation is well diversified to maintain an upward trend in earnings. Notably, Sorare offers a premium API link for access to its open data. As a result, many websites offer information or side games using Sorare’s data.
Messi joining Sorare as a brand ambassador will allow it to reach a wider audience. Additionally, during the past few years, GameFi initiatives have dominated the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries.
Despite this, Sorare will need to promote its product more given that rivals are investing more money in the GameFi sector. In the upcoming years, it is anticipated that the NFT market would expand significantly more.
Institutional investors have identified the NFT sector as a promising opportunity for scalability. Additionally, Web3 technology, which includes the majority of NFT marketplaces, is decentralized and accessible from anywhere in the globe via the internet.
What Other Did Lionel Messi sign?
Messi and the Socios Sports Fan Engagement platform struck a contract in March last year to promote the platform’s native Chiliz (CHZ) cryptocurrency.
In accordance with a separate contract, the Argentine talisman also serves as a brand ambassador for the company.
Messi also consented to collect a portion of his income in $PSG fan tokens, the virtual currency created by the same app just for Paris Saint-Germain, when he signed a two-year contract with the club.
