NBA Expands Into Web3, Teams Up With NFT Platform Sorare For Fantasy Basketball Game

The National Basketball League (NBA) has partnered with popular NFT platform Sorare making the latter the Official NFT Fantasy Partner of the professional basketball league.

According to a statement shared by NBA, Sorare and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) on Wednesday, the NFT platform will debut its first "first officially licensed, free-to-play digital collectible-based fantasy basketball game" this fall for the NBA 2022-23 season.

"Our partnership with Sorare will give NBA fans an entirely new way to engage with our teams and players," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said, adding, "With Sorare's emerging NFT fantasy platform, we see significant opportunities to broaden our community of fans and grow NBA basketball around the world."

The statement added that the fantasy game will provide new ways for fans to interact with the association and will also allow users "to create a lineup of NFT-based digital collectibles representing their favorite players and teams to earn points based on the real-life performance of NBA players."

Moreover, Sorare has been given the green signal to use the official NBA league and team logos across its products during the tenure of the multi-year deal.

Sorare boasts around two million registered users across 185 countries and has been aiming to expand to Asia and Europe as well. The partnership with NBA is the NFT platform's third deal with a U.S. sports league. The waiting list for the game is already live.

According to a previous report, the French NFT startup raised a record $680 million from investors in September 2021 and reached a valuation of $4.3 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups in France.