Blockchain-based fantasy soccer game Sorare has signed a licensing agreement with Real Betis — the Andalusian soccer team that drew the French star player Nabil Fekir to La Liga last summer.

Fekir will be just one of the Real Betis-licensed digital collectible player cards issued by Sorare on the Ethereum blockchain.

For each player and each soccer season, Sorare issues one “unique” player card, 10 “super rare” player cards, and 100 “rare” player cards. These can then be traded on secondary markets or used in Sorare’s game.

One of these unique player cards — for Belgian goalie Hendrik Van Crombrugge — was auctioned for over $1,600 earlier this month.

In the game, club “managers” create teams of five player cards to compete for weekly rewards; the most successful can earn a prize of as high as 2.64 Ether (ETH).

Sorare’s licensing agreement with Real Betis follows similar deals with major clubs such as Juventus, Schalke, S.S. Lazio, Atletico Madrid and Porto.

Sports, gaming and beyond

As reported, big names such as Juventus have made prior forays into blockchain gaming, announcing partnerships with tokenized fan-voting platform Socios in late 2019.

Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team has meanwhile partnered with CryptoKaiju to launch crypto collectibles backed by non-fungible tokens — a form of crypto asset that is not interchangeable and carries unique information (metadata).

Such digital collectibles and blockchain-based gaming ecosystems are quickly gaining traction as a lucrative industry, providing a way for individuals and enterprises to efficiently monetize online phenomena, games and branded products.

Household names such as Microsoft, Formula 1 and Atari — the developer behind the iconic video games Tetris and Pac Man — have all made their mark on the new sector.