We will fully offset our unavoidable carbon emissions by the end of 2022 with the long-term objective of reaching net-zero by 2025

We are excited to share our new partnership with Plan A, the leading carbon accounting, decarbonisation, and ESG reporting platform, as part of a long-term sustainability strategy.

In July of 2021, we reduced our corporate carbon footprint by 99 percent by migrating the vast majority of our transactions within the Ethereum blockchain to the more efficient Layer 2 network. Our long-term ambition is to align our decarbonisation efforts to a long-term net-zero strategy.

Sorare cards are backed by non-fungible technology to ensure scarcity, authenticity and true ownership. While the technology ensures the highest levels of transparency and security for gaming, it is often associated with environmental challenges as it used to consume large amounts of electricity, before the Ethereum migration known as the “The Merge’’, from “proof-of-work” to “proof-of-stake”. See below for how The Merge changed Ethereum’s energy consumption.

The partnership with Plan A will also focus on developing and implementing a science-based long-term net-zero strategy by:

(1) reducing emissions in our value chain
(2) investing in high-quality carbon offsets for emissions which can not be reduced starting this year.

As the Plan A Initial Emissions Report shows, Sorare has a total carbon footprint of 133,643 tCO2e for 2021. Broken down by Scopes and emission activities, the following picture emerges:

The major share of Sorare’s emissions — which generally applies to tech and digital companies — comes from Scope 3, in particular from Category 1 (purchased goods and services) as a result of the gas consumed to conduct the platform operations in the underlying main blockchain architecture, the so-called Layer 1. To reduce this high electricity consumption, we migrated the majority of its transactions within the Ethereum blockchain to the 2,000 times more efficient Layer 2 (overlaying network) in July 2021 and was able to decrease the associated emissions by 99 percent, significantly reducing its corporate carbon footprint.

We are committed to further reducing its emissions as we continue our rapid growth. We will leverage Plan A Platform’s AI to understand the emission hotspots of our operations and derive science-based decarbonisation targets and a long-term net-zero strategy. We’re now planning to shift to green mobility and introduce policies for business trip reduction and vendor selection to reduce its office and transport-related emissions.

Sorare is a business created to have a global impact on behalf of sports fans, players and teams but, as we grow our game and our community, we want to ensure that we are doing so responsibly and sustainably. Our goal is to turn Sorare into a net-zero company and in the process to set the industry standard for sustainable practices among companies utilising blockchain technology. We’re delighted to partner with Plan A to help us achieve this and we look forward to working with them to meet our net-zero ambitions in a scientifically robust and strategic way.

We’re partnering with Plan A to build world’s first net-zero gaming company was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Six-time NBA All-Star Blake Griffin and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert have more than a court in common. They both sit at the forefront of sports and technology and today, we can officially say they are investors in Sorare. Welcome to the family, Blake and Rudy!

With over two decades of NBA experience, Blake and Rudy know the league and its fans inside out and are indescribably passionate about enriching fans’ experiences and connecting with them on a deeper level. They will be invaluable coaches to us as we step onto the court ourselves this fall when we launch the Sorare: NBA game for the league’s 77th regular season, which we just announced today.

“As basketball has shifted from local supporters to global fanbases, NBA fans are looking for new ways to be connected to the game, the players and other fans.” said Blake Griffin. “Sorare understands that, bringing free-to-play fantasy gaming to reality. I’m proud to be part of their team and support them to connect the fans with the leagues and its athletes.”

“As a French athlete who once pursued his dream of making it to the NBA, I connected immediately with Sorare’s ambitions after meeting Nicolas. The ability for our league to appeal to a new generation will only be furthered.” explained Rudy Gobert. “I’m looking forward to helping the team and the Sorare community connect with basketball fans around the world ’.

Together, we’ll transform sports fandom, allowing everyone to own a piece of the games they love, no matter the sport or geographic region.

To sign up for the waiting list for the Sorare: NBA game launching this fall, visit sorare.com/NBA.

Welcoming Blake Griffin and Rudy Gobert as Sorare Investors was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Sorare, we’re on a mission to build the future of sports entertainment, and today we are pleased to announce the appointment of Tu Nguyen as our CFO to help us continue to structure and scale our business for the exciting years ahead.

In 2021, we’ve seen tremendous growth:

- From $8 million trading volume in 2020 to $325 million in 2021 without paid marketing
- From 10 team members to 50 early 2022
- From 100 football clubs to 230

As we continue to experience strong growth and expand our footprint in the U.S. and globally, we need an experienced finance leader to help us meet the challenges and opportunities ahead. As the former CFO of 1stDibs, the leading marketplace for luxury design, Tu brings critical experience building the finance infrastructure for a marketplace business, scaling through hyper-growth, and even launching their first NFT business. Beyond her resume, she’s also a huge sports fan (Arsenal when it comes to football!) who believes in the need to bring sports fans, leagues, teams and athletes closer together. As she joins our New York City office to oversee our financial strategy, we invited her to share more about herself and why she’s joining the Sorare team.

Why I joined Sorare:

“A good friend of mine said this company was practically made for me, and it’s true because Sorare brings together three things that I always look for. First, I want to work for category leaders, and Sorare is not only an existing leader in sports NFTs, but it has the potential to become a powerhouse in entertainment and media more broadly. Second, I want to work with technology that pushes frontiers, and I believe that Web3 is a once-in-a-generation technology. And last but not least, I am a big sports fan — the sense of community it brings is unlike anything else, and I’m already feeling that excitement within the Sorare community.”

What I will bring to Sorare:

“I hope to bring my deep experience in building the finance infrastructure that supports hypergrowth in multiple categories and geographies. I will put in place a rigorous financial framework with a focus on driving capital allocation among Sorare’s growth levers, to advance the future of sports, NFTs, and free-to-play fantasy gaming.”

We couldn’t build the future of sports entertainment without an amazing team. We’re recruiting across positions with the goal to hire 200 new team members over the next months. If you’re excited about what we’re building, check our open positions in both France and in the U.S.

Introducing Tu Nguyen, our new CFO, as we continue our global growth was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For many people, Serena Williams is one of the most iconic athletes of all-time. Serena is also an entrepreneur, a brand builder and an investor at the forefront of sports and technology.

To the Sorare team, she is more than an icon as she joins the company as a Board Advisor.

In her new role, Serena will provide guidance to the board on a range of topics, including developing Sorare’s relationship with athletes around the world, advising on Sorare’s strategies to expand into new sports categories including women’s sports, as well as future impact initiatives for making Web3 more inclusive and diverse.

Serena Williams is among the most important figures in sports and culture, who has redefined the modern athlete and entrepreneur, including her unprecedented early stage investing successes. The strategic counsel that Serena will bring in building one of the most iconic sports entertainment brands is invaluable. I’m thrilled to have her join the team. Together, we’ll forge new ways for fans to engage with their favorite athletes.

Serena joins us during a time of rapid expansion and organic growth in the US. Her expertise building brands, businesses and passionate fan bases — both on and off the court — will help accelerate the company’s growth as we attract new players and onboard new teams and leagues across sports categories and geographies.

Together, we’ll build the future of sports entertainment on Web3, allowing everyone to own a piece of the games they love, whether that be in football or in other sports to come.

If you excited about what we’re building together with Serena, we’re hiring both in Paris and New York. See our open positions.

Serena Williams joins Sorare as Board Advisor was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

2021 has been a landmark year for NFTs and Sorare.

If you had asked me this time last year, I must admit I couldn’t have predicted such a breakout for NFTs this year. NFT sales surged past $10B in Q3, and we can expect close to $25B of NFT sales for 2021. Behind these numbers, two strong narratives shaped the year:

• Art: The art world discovered NFTs through Beeple’s $69M NFT auction on Christies, smashing misconceptions that digital art couldn’t be owned or valued like traditional art. Simultaneously, the entertainment world discovered NFTs with PFP (profile pictures mainly on Twitter) through Cryptopunks, Bored Apes (BAYC) and countless other interesting projects that one can find on OpenSea these days, proving that even the average consumer found value in owning digital works of art, and opening up a new channel for creators and artists to get paid for their work on the internet.
• Gaming: The incredible success of Axie Infinity (with more than 1 million Daily Active Users) and the rise of “play-to-earn” has shaken the industry. Instead of paying for in-game items that have no real-world value, NFTs will bring back power to the gamers, as they will be able to freely trade and use their gaming items all over the internet.

At Sorare, our thesis has always been that NFTs can bring the cultural masses to Web3, doing this specifically through the passion of sports. We want to build the next sports entertainment giant, by helping the billions of sports fans own their game and become stakeholders rather than stay spectators.

As we head into 2022, I find it useful to think about what we’re in for. It helps us define our roadmap and think about how to build a better sports gaming ecosystem for all. Here are my top predictions for what is going to happen in the 3 industries that Sorare sits in: NFTs, Gaming and Sports.

1. NFTs to unlock experiences

Non Fungible Tokens can be used to represent anything: art, gaming items, tickets to games, access to social experiences. Next year, we’ll be seeing more NFTs in our everyday life, helping owners of these NFTs unlock physical experiences.

Right now, if you own a Bored Ape, you are part of a club that can participate in certain events. On Sorare, if you own a LaLiga Ticket Edition NFT, you can physically attend a LaLiga game with it. If you owned the Gerard Piqué LaLiga Ticket Edition, you were able to attend the Clasico as a VIP, tour the stadium and go behind the scenes. In fact I predict we will see one major sporting event next year, be it the Super Bowl, UEFA Champions League Final or FIFA World Cup Final, to use NFTs as tickets.

The opportunities are endless and I expect NFTs will help create connections between the digital world and the physical world, ranging from sports with Sorare, to music and concerts and many different industries. We intend to invest in this area and build NFTs that can unlock sport experiences.

2. 50% of decentralised apps will run on zk-rollups by year-end

Rollups are poised to be the scalability solution for all blockchains. With an increasing number of users, scalability is one of the biggest roadblocks to mainstream blockchain adoption. Rollups are hybrid solutions in that they move transactions outside the main “layer 1” blockchain but still keep some data per-transaction on it. It is first being implemented on Ethereum but I expect all blockchains will start to adopt rollup technology, including Solana, Flow, Cosmos etc. in order to achieve greater privacy and scalability, a prerequisite for any application that targets billions of users.

An increasing community of decentralised apps, or “dapps”, are now live on rollups (see here) but I believe that 2022 will be the breakout year for ZK technology. This is a long-term infrastructure trend that will help bring blockchain applications to hundreds of millions of users. For more context, our lead blockchain engineer Pierre explained why we chose rollups and Starkware to build our infrastructure.

3. Legacy gaming studios will dip their toes in NFTs

With the rise of crypto games, I’m expecting to see much more action from traditional gaming studios in the world of NFTs. This could be a top gaming studio launching NFTs in games played by tens of millions of users, or increased M&A between Gaming Studios and Web3 games. It could also very well be more Web3 Studios like Sorare investing in traditional studios to help further build interoperability between games or acqui-hire some talent. My belief is that crypto-native gaming studios will be able to move faster than others. If you’re from a traditional gaming studio looking to build the future of gaming, join us, we have more than 50 positions opened.

Down the line, I think we’ll see more interest from traditional gaming studios in experimenting with interoperable games, bringing external IPs into their universe and seeing if there is a path for interconnected games that puts the gamer at the center of the experience. It may take years but interoperability is a worthwhile pursuit for gamers and developers. Being able to take earned or purchased gaming assets from one game to another provides players with much more value, and for gaming studios each new gaming use case adds value to the underlying asset, increasing the asset’s desirability and liquidity all over the internet.

4. NFTs will be the bricks of the Metaverse

If a big part of our future lives are spent living in global, virtual, interconnected worlds (the metaverse), then NFTs are some of the primary building blocks for everything in that world.

With the development of centralized Metaverses vs decentralized Metaverses, users will further realize the value of truly owning their assets. With a centralized Metaverse, people will create content and games that the centralized entity behind the Metaverse will own. With a decentralized metaverse, any content and game built by people will be owned by these same people. The difference will be obvious. I expect more social platforms to adopt NFTs as they shift to the metaverse, which requires a functioning economy that works across platforms.

5. The rise of NFTs will help boost Women’s Sports’ fanbase

Women’s sports have been historically underrepresented, underappreciated and undervalued. We believe that NFTs can significantly accelerate the development of women’s sports by giving fans a direct line of support to the teams and players they care about, while also bringing in the broader sports and NFT communities who understand the value of these collectible items.

At Sorare, we’ve been lucky to see how leagues around the world have expanded their fan bases thanks to our engaged community — while typical sports fans mostly cheer on their home team, Sorare players get invested in their favorite players all around the world as they build their fantasy teams (see examples here). We expect to see the same broadening of engagement happen here, with players engaging in women’s sports that they previously may have ignored. At Sorare, we’re committed to changing the tides by investing in women’s sports and working on the inclusion of women in the three industries we sit in: the NFT, Gaming and Crypto space.

6. The Top 10 Sports Organizations will develop sophisticated NFT strategies

2021 saw a lot of excitement in sports about crypto and it has been the fastest sponsorship category in sports. However, crypto and NFTs are different. And NFTs are not a market but a technology.

2022 will see the excitement from this year channelled by sports organizations into developing a more sophisticated understanding of the power of NFTs in 2022, to connect with fans, add value and unlock experiences. With that understanding will come specialist hires (think Head of Digital Assets) but also a deeper grasp of the differences between the different sports crypto business models, as well as between which are the legitimate players and which are the unproven ones.

7. Most NFTs will go to zero

Yes, 2021 has been a crazy year.
Yes, most people still think NFTs are a fad.
Yes, like any ground breaking technology such as the internet, there is irrational exuberance.

As we’re entering the possibilities offered by Web3 — the decentralized, ownable and programmable web — we have seen hundreds of new projects popping up every day. But it’s important to remember that Web3 is not about specific NFTs, it’s about what you can do with it, be that providing access, social capital or utility.

I expect most NFTs will go to zero the same way most .com companies went to zero — the hype does not negate the underlying trend, and if you choose projects that build for the long-term, you will find the Amazon of the .com bubble. NFTs help you own a piece of the internet and as our good friend Alexis Ohanian explains, the internet is a culture machine and is a community connector. Ultimately, NFTs are now a part of the culture, and while not every NFT will survive, we will absolutely see projects that will retain value for centuries to come.

While some of these predictions may seem bold or out there, I’d say that it’s not a matter of “if” but rather “when.” If 2021 taught us anything, it’s that the power of NFTs are being embraced even faster than even those in the industry would have expected, and I can’t wait to see what 2022 has in store. If you’re excited about NFT technology and its impact in Gaming or Sports, we have many open positions here

Predictions for 2022 was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When my co-founder and I first laid out our vision for Sorare in the summer of 2018, our ambition was to create a new game that could unlock the limitless potential of non fungible technology. Because of our shared passion for the beautiful game, creating a fantasy football product was the perfect place to begin our journey.

Through Sorare, we have harnessed the potential of a technology that is transforming the gaming industry. Since day one (see our seed deck, and my first blog post announcing Sorare) passionate football fans have bought into our innovative vision and helped propel Sorare to new and dizzying heights.

In February, I announced that Sorare raised a $50M Series A from renowned investors such as Benchmark (investor in Twitter, Snap, Instagram or Discord), Accel and a team of world-class investors including Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand, Oliver Bierhoff, Alexis Ohanian and Gary Vaynerchuck.

This helped us to greatly accelerate our development and to improve our community’s experience:

• We are building a world-class team and have tripled in size
• We signed a five year partnership with LaLiga & added over 50 national teams and clubs
• We scaled our infrastructure on Ethereum whilst drastically reducing our carbon footprint
• We introduced a new scarcity to make Sorare accessible to all fans globally

In 2021, more footballers, clubs and football fans around the world embraced Sorare’s NFT fantasy model and discovered a new and deeper connection with football. We now have over 180 clubs, 6000 licensed footballers, and 600,000 registered users and we’re only getting started. We are innovative, and have built a model that has set the foundations for the next sports entertainment giant.

New investors have backed us with a record-breaking fundraising round of $680 million, the largest in the history of French Tech and the largest in Europe for a Series B.

Led by SoftBank, this fundraise was made with the participation of Atomico, Bessemer Ventures, D1 Capital, Eurazeo, IVP and Liontree, joining historical investors such as Benchmark, Accel and Partech, and leading business angels including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and football players Gerard Piqué, Rio Ferdinand, Antoine Griezmann and César Azpilicueta.

The record breaking Series B is a huge statement of intent that will greatly improve our NFT fantasy gaming experience for millions of sports fans.

This fundraising will help deliver our key objective: to create the next world champion in sports entertainment, by leveraging NFTs. To achieve this, we will use the funds to:

1. Continue to build a world class team — by recruiting the best talents from all over the world. We’re looking to fill many new roles, both in Europe and in the US — check our open positions.
2. Sign new partnerships — bringing the top 20 football leagues onboard and the top 50 national teams.
3. Accelerate on mobile and marketing — our fantasy game will be a mobile first experience that fans globally will know about.
4. Expand into new sports — we’ve received interest from leagues and fans across the globe to replicate our model in other sports. We plan to roll out new sports in 2022.

With Sorare, we’ve experienced an entrepreneurial adventure at the crossroads of sport, gaming and an exciting new technology: NFTs.

Going forward, we wish to give back to the community. Here are three programs that we will be exploring going forward.

1. Supporting community-led football programs: Football can change lives, it brings happiness and should be accessible to all. We are going to work with and support community-led initiatives that aim to bring the magic of football to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

2. Backing young underprivileged entrepreneurs: We were very fortunate that investors supported us in our original Seed funding. We want to offer small businesses the same opportunities we had in their search for funding, specifically in the field of sport and gaming.

3. Supporting female representation in sports: Women’s sports are underrepresented, underappreciated and undervalued. We believe that NFTs can significantly accelerate the development of women’s sports. We will actively invest in this by beginning with women’s football.

In case you missed it, you can watch and share our announcement video over on our Twitter. We would like to thank the Sorare community for the journey so far. They’ve been early believers in our vision. We look forward to keep on growing together as a community, as a game and as a company for years to come.

Sorare raises a record $680 million Series B round to build the next sports entertainment giant… was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are excited to share that Sorare has raised a $4M seed round. This represents a major milestone for our mission to make crypto assets fun and accessible through a global fantasy football game. The round was led by e.ventures and followed by Partech, Fabric Ventures, Semantic Ventures, Cygni Capital, World-Cup champion André Schürrle and existing investors.

Sports collectors have been able to collect and trade player cards in the physical world for decades. We could not collect digitally without digital scarcity. The Ethereum blockchain has changed this paradigm. Sorare uses Ethereum to create scarce officially-licensed football player cards. Users can freely buy and sell scarce digital collectibles representing football players on our online marketplace. More importantly, these cards are not only collectibles. They provide valuable utility in our fantasy football game where you can compete and earn rewards every week.

Sorare experienced unprecedented growth over the past 6 months with sales of our officially licensed player cards going from USD 30,000 in December 2019 to USD 350,000 in June 2020. More than 70 football clubs from Europe, the United States, and Asia have contracted with Sorare to issue officially licensed cards amongst them Juventus, Atletico Madrid, and Olympique Lyonnais. Building a presence in Sorare offers those clubs exposure to a global audience and a new revenue stream.

We started rolling out our beta in March 2019 to an invite-only community that shared our vision for a new type of fantasy football with digital collectibles. We kept Sorare invite-only until late 2019 so that we could speak to as many people as possible and shape the game based on their feedback. The community kept growing and we are grateful for the community’s early support and insights. We were not expecting to see so many side-apps around Sorare cards at such an early stage: Soraredata, Cryptoslam, SorareMVP, and many others coming. We look forward to seeing and encouraging more side-games.

We’ll be using this $4M seed funding to continue scaling even further. Specifically, we will:

1. Double the size of our team by year-end to improve our gaming experience so that it becomes more accessible and more fun. We are recruiting designers and full-stack engineers in Paris
2. Double the football clubs under license by year-end. Our goal is to sign with the top 20 football leagues in the world to create a truly global fantasy football game.

Since we are a game running on the Ethereum blockchain, all our numbers are publicly available data. From a cultural standpoint, we’re very transparent with our community about our roadmap. To be as transparent as possible, we’ve made our investor presentation slides available to all.

Our goal is to create the most fun game for football fans to leverage their football knowledge and play with skin in the game. If you haven’t tried Sorare yet, the first 10 cards are on us.

Play Sorare today and join the community on:

🔥 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/TSjtHaM
📭 Telegram: https://t.me/SorareFC
✨ Twitter: https://twitter.com/SorareHQ
🖨️ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sorare/

Our next chapter: Sorare raises a $4M Seed round led by e.ventures was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re reading this post, it means — and I’m pretty sure about it — that you believe in the potential of crypto-assets. Well, I’m no different. I believe they can transform the way we perceive and exchange value.

However, when you start explaining the “hows” to any relative, for example to your father, you quickly see his eyes drifting from interest to doubt, uncertainty and even fear. Why? I think that’s because Bitcoin, the main use case today, is very complex to grasp as it encompasses issues of economics, politics, game theory, cryptography and so on. And, no surprises there, you don’t know all about these.

To be honest, I’ve experienced this frustration time and time again over the last few years. Not only with my father, but also with broader friends and family.

Now, imagine that you no longer have to explain anything about crypto-assets ever again. Imagine that a product tells the crypto story for you. Imagine a product that covers issues of censorship resistance, digital scarcity, openness, global liquidity etc. without you — and this is the most important bit — needing to mention these words.

How can we design a mainstream crypto product?

Already trusted by over 30 football clubs (with many more to be announced in the coming weeks), Sorare is a platform that allows you to very easily collect and play with official football crypto-goods.

A Sorare crypto-good has a limited number of editions, is tradable on a marketplace and can be used in a variety of football games.

You all know about it, but nowadays owning a crypto-asset is a hassle because mainstream users need to go over 20 steps to buy one and its value is hard to get.

Sorare, on the other hand, allows you to buy a crypto-asset that you can relate to personally — namely a football player — in just three clicks.

Choose [click one], Pay with your credit card [click two], Play [click three].

What’s more, you can use it in an engaging fantasy football game that will in turn, allow you to earn more crypto!

The issue with blockchain is user adoption

I don’t believe that blockchains have a scaling problem, I am convinced that their issue has to do with user adoption.

Sorare is tackling this adoption issue as it aims at creating a product that can outperform its centralized counterparts and remove UX frictions related to dApps.

The ability offered by Sorare to freely resell and freely use your football player’s crypto-good is a unique advantage many gamers don’t even know they want yet.

But once they experience it, they may come to demand it from all the games they play in the future. Can we open a trillion dollar market?

Sorare is building an open platform. May it work, we would have in the coming years brought crypto in the hands of millions of mainstream users.

Want to get involved?

• Join the Waiting List to get access to Sorare beta here
• Join our Discord community and try to win the first Sorare crypto-goods here
• Come meet us at NFT NYC where I’ll do a talk on How NFTs are reshaping the Sports Fan experience
• Follow us on Twitter for company updates

Sorare: Bringing crypto to the hands of mainstream users was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.