By James Davis
A recent court ruling claiming that NBA Top Shot NFTs are unregistered securities has signaled that US regulators could be coming for the NFT market.
Now the CEO of fantasy sports NFT company Sorare, Nicolas Julia, wants the firm’s products to be listed under a new category outside the current daily fantasy sports and sports betting regulations.
Julia says their NFTs are not betting products. Therefore he hopes to engage with the US and Europe regulators to help establish a regulatory framework appropriate for the new category.
The CEO adds that his firm has already secured support from the France government that is now pushing for a new legal framework which he hopes could happen in the next few months.
Sorare Expands Into More Markets
Sorare, a french company, claims that it has over 2.5 million users across the world through its partnership with more than 300 sports organizations, including the MLS, MLB, NBA, and English premier league, among others.
Julia reveals Sorare is in talks with other European football leagues, including Spain’s La Liga and Germany’s Bundesliga, to start offering NFT contests on the firm’s platform.
This platform allows users to buy or sell digital player cards and use those players to join fantasy contests where the users earn points based on a player’s real game performance. Those who win the contests earn prizes like jerseys and tickets to meet their favorite players in real life.
Investors in Sorare
In September 2021, Sorare raised $670 million in a funding round led by Japanese investment company SoftBank. Other investors in the company include soccer stars Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi and tennis legend Serena Williams.
All Sorare NFT games are built on Ethereum, which differs from NBA Top Shot NFTs that run on a private blockchain called Flow.
In February’s ruling, the court said Dapper Labs’ (creators of the NBA Top Shot collection) reliance on a private network played a huge role in deeming those NFTs as securities.
However, Dapper Labs disputed the notion saying that the Flow blockchain is gradually decentralizing, with several external validators operating over 67% of its nodes.