- Fenerbahce S.K. is the first Turkish Super League club to join Sorare and create digital cards of players alongside world-class clubs such as Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, and Bayern Munich.
- Sorare created a marketplace to trade digital cards which provides a new revenue stream for 100+ football clubs, generating $1,300,000 in card sales per month in November 2020.
- Turkish users rank #3 in time spent on the Sorare platform (1H15 per day), and #5 in terms of the number of users with a 26% month on month growth since opening the beta.
Istanbul & Paris, December 10, 2020– Turkey’s most titled football club Fenerbahce S.K. today joins Global Fantasy Football game Sorare. It will enable Fenerbahce card collectors and fantasy football gamers to freely buy, sell, and play with digital cards of players from the team, such as Luiz Gustavo, Mbawna Samatta, or Ozan Tufan.
Since it opened its beta in December 2019, Sorare has grown an average of 52% month on month, and today counts over 55.000 users worldwide, with $6 million in cards sold across 80 countries. This is the first Turkish Super League team to join Sorare.
Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia comments: “Millennials are increasingly tuning out of longer sports broadcast formats that don’t engage them. In an economy where the attention of audiences is the single most important unit of currency, games are becoming a new avenue for football brands to reach this highly specific yet desirable demographic.”
Fenerbahce can further expand its international brand by reaching several untapped audiences of fans: gamers globally as well as growing their fan base in Asia and America where Sorare is growing strongly.
Sorare is also effectively opening up a new revenue stream for Fenerbahce by creating a new game licensing category: fantasy football licensing.
Julia adds: “Given the current climate due to the covid-19 pandemic, this provides a new opportunity for football teams to create interest when live games have been significantly impacted. It offers football clubs a way to diversify their revenue streams.”
While football collectors have been able to collect and trade player cards for decades, this was limited to the physical world. Sorare is a global fantasy game that brings people together, especially in times of isolation, through their sports fandom.
The fantasy managers buy digital cards of players for the same reasons they buy cards offline – status, differentiation, identity, and membership. Cards are about the nostalgic factor. This also offers the most direct way of investing in the upside of a sports player. The Mbappé Unique card sold for $65.000 last week.
Fenerbahce S.K. aficionados around the world can now play with their favorite footballers by using their cards in their fantasy team. The score of the card will depend on the performance of the player in real-life.
Julia concludes: “We are delighted to have Fenerbahce S.K join Sorare as the first Turkish Premier League club. Despite not having any clubs under license in Turkey until now, we were impressed to see it has been our fastest-growing market, due to the country’s appetite for fantasy football. By interacting with Sorare’s digital cards, Fenerbahce S.K fans will be able to express their fandom inside and outside of our global fantasy game.”
Sorare has built an online marketplace where users can freely buy and sell scarce digital collectibles representing football players ranked based on their performances in real matches.
The Ethereum blockchain is used to establish who owns the digital card at any given time and secures the cards’ digital scarcity. It creates a new level of trust and freedom for gamers.
About the agreement, Fenerbahçe Football Inc. Board Member Sina Afra expressed that “We, Fenerbahçe as the biggest and pioneer sports club of Turkey, once again led the way in Turkey and took a global step with Sorare. Now we are on a stage with the giants like Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. The President Ali Koç being in the first place, thanks to the executive board’s vision aware of the digital world’s ability, we as Fenerium became the pioneer in Turkey in a brand new sphere.”
“All the components of our club have the motivation not to catch to era, but to run in the same alignment with the World and even lead the tail. We all work in this mind-set. What we aim for is to enhance our brand equality and vary revenue items to advance our club by taking place in platforms where the most significant clubs do so. The co-operation with Sorare is a move through this aim.”
Afra continued: “These kinds of agreements are extremely crucial to create added value in terms of both brand equality and finance within the frame of new world dynamics. We will keep taking leading steps. Moreover, it is also very important the fact that our players take place with their face in a global game as assets. We believe that our fans interested in fantasy games will be very solicitous about our digital cards. We hope that this co-operation will be successful and gain more strength to our club.”
More than 100 football clubs from Europe, the United States, and Asia have partnered with Sorare to issue officially licensed cards so that football fans can collect and play with their favorite players. See all licensed clubs on Sorare here.
About Sorare
Sorare is a global fantasy football game where managers can trade official digital cards. Sorare is on a mission to create a world where people sports fandom matters. Since opening its beta in December 2019, Sorare’s game has attracted 55,000+ users with a monthly volume of over $1,300,000 in November 2020. Based in Paris, Sorare is funded by Tier 1 VCs such as e.ventures, Partech, Seedcamp, and ConsenSys.
About Fenerbahce S.K.
Fenerbahçe SK (sports club) is the biggest Turkish sports club based in Istanbul, Turkey. Fenerbahçe is a major multi-sport club that competes in football, basketball, volleyball, athletics, swimming, sailing, rowing, boxing, and table tennis; among others, with many major honours won in each department. The professional football department is the most notable. With 28 Turkish championships in total Fenerbahçe holds the record for most national championship titles won.
Disclaimer
All the information contained on our website is published in good faith and for general information purposes only. Any action the reader takes upon the information found on our website is strictly at their own risk.
