NFTs, Fantasy Sports, and more: What the CEO of Sorare in a Recent Episode of the Epicenter Podcast Shared

This week, we’ve summarized a recent episode from the Epicenter Podcast, featuring Nicolas Julia, the co-founder, and CEO of Sorare. NFTs, fantasy sports, the inception of Sorare, web3 products, and community building are some of the topics covered in the podcast.

Nicolas was fascinated by NFTs back in 2018 as it seemed like the right vehicle to make crypto assets accessible to a large population of individuals. Inspired by his love for sports, he built a global fantasy football game on top of the blockchain & NFT technology.

How Sorare works

You basically have a collection of cards that represent football players. You get to make up your own team from those cards. The scores are based on how the players in the game perform in their real-world games. In essence, you play the role of a football team manager on Sorare. You can compete against other teams made up by people such as yourself.

While what we have above is a simple interpretation of Sorare, there are other aspects to it as well.

Why Go with NFTs for building Sorare?

While NFTs are a rage in the present day, back when Sorare started, they weren’t as popular. When asked about how Nicolas was nonetheless sure about building in such a nascent technology back in the day, here’s what he said:

He was apparently drawn towards NFTs and grew certain that building in this space would be the right thing to do because of the strong community that backed technologies such as NFTs, Blockchain, and Crypto.

Furthermore, NFTs, despite having a shared architecture and technology with crypto assets such as Bitcoins, were easier to understand for the general public.

Sorare, moreover, is built on a hybrid fantasy model where the fantasy element is combined with NFT collectibles. In essence, players own their team and games in a way that has never been enabled before in other fantasy game platforms.

Sorare’s Decision to Go with a Licensing Model

Sorare, unlike most other fantasy games, went ahead with a licensing model. The podcast hosts ask Nicolas more about the complexities involved with such a licensing model.

Nicolas says that they chose the route of licensing because doing otherwise would be less impactful and meaningful. While they may leverage the existing community by creating fake players and linking it to the real world, it does not add up to their long-term vision. The only other way out in such a case would be through licensing.

Sorare opting for licensing then brings us to an important question of what happens to all the assets on Sorare if the platform ceases to exist. Would these assets lie on the Ethereum blockchain perpetually? Or what happens to them. Nicolas says that the people who buy NFTs on their platforms own them independently out of Sorare, which in essence helps them own a part of a game. They can trade these NFTs just as they can trade physical assets.

In future when platforms such as Twitter provide a facility to put up one’s NFTs on their profiles, it would then lead to possibilities where users can not only start showing off their NFTs as collectibles, but can also use them in other gaming platforms that may be built on top of Sorare.

Sorare community: How big it is and the dollar value of assets

The Sorare community comprises at least 50,000 active paying users. They also have more than 200 football clubs on the platform.

While most companies look forward to getting paid users, Nicolas and his team at Sorare wanted to go the route of organic growth. As a result, Sorare now enjoys a retention rate that is more than 70%, comparable to that of Netflix.

Traditional gaming industry vs Web3 platforms such as Sorare

The fundamental difference between traditional games and NFT-based games such as Sorare is the fact that there is no cross-platform compatibility. Whatever assets and progress one earns on a traditional web2 game remains in that and doesn’t translate to assets or money in any other platform. With platforms such as Sorare, the value created from a game does not just sit in the platform, but also has value outside of it.

This is all we have from the latest episode of the Epicenter Podcast. Check out the complete podcast for more insights on building web3-centric games, regulatory pushbacks, and more. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr0v6oAL5lE&t=487s

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