In brief Fantasy soccer game Sorare tokenized the soccer team that Cristiano Ronaldo plays in, Juventus FC.

Players can buy unique cards that they can trade, and use for fantasy football leagues on the platform.

It's a non-fungible token, like CryptoKitties.

Sorare, a fantasy football (U.S. translation: soccer) site and game, today released a digital asset that represents superstar Cristiano Ronaldo as a non-fungible token. Sorare also released cards for all players on Ronaldo’s team, Juventus FC, during its presale.

Players can use the cards to compete in fantasy leagues or trade them on secondary markets, such as OpenSea. The tokens were published via a licensing agreement with the club.

Soare will release only 111 Cristiano Ronaldo cards, which players can bid on in a presale, which ends on Friday. The most expensive bundle Ronaldo’s in is currently valued at around 57 euros, or $61.

How Sorare's non-fungible token works

Soare issued the cards via the Ethereum token standard, ERC-721, which is also known as a non-fungible token. This means the cards are unique, and can’t be duplicated. The 111 Ronaldo cards up for grabs are the only ones in existence (unless the company decides to issue more).

Other popular tokens in the NFT market include those from Gods Unchained (crypto’s take on Hearthstone), and CryptoKitties, which tokenizes digital kittens.

Still, Ronaldo is a "common" card, according to the site. In fact, when Decrypt created an account on Soare's site, we were issued our very own Ronaldo card for free.

Football embraces blockchain

The football industry is getting on board with blockchain in a big way. Last week, blockchain company London Football Exchange announced it had bought an 80% share in the Australian football team, Perth Glory. “Our plan is to build out a full group [...] where you’ve got a stake in multi-club ownership in various leagues, globally,” CEO, Jim Aylward, told Decrypt.

And on Monday, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) announced it is distributing one million tickets on the blockchain for the UEFA Euro 2020 football tournament.