NBA and NBPA partner with Sorare, which makes NFT-based sports games and claims to have 2M users, to launch a digital collectibles-based fantasy basketball game
Sorare is a fantasy sports game that allows users to collect non-fungible token … Wayne Jones / crypto.news : Gameplay Galaxy, Spice AI, Omni Wallet, and Tesseract Complete Successful Venture Rounds Tim Casey / Forbes : NBA, NBA Players Association Strike Deal With Sorare For NFT Fantasy Game Tweets: Kevin Cage / @kevin_cage_ : Sorare has become the “Official #NFT Fantasy Partner” of the NBA. #CryptoNews #DigitalAssets https://www.coindesk.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Sorare arrives at this deal from a position of unusual strength for a two-year-old company: a $50M Series A led by Benchmark followed by a $680M SoftBank-led Series B at a $4.3B valuation, all built on ethereum-based soccer collectibles. The NBA partnership is its first major move beyond soccer — and the same playbook it would later extend with a four-year Premier League deal reportedly worth tens of millions per year.
The deal also lands while Sorare's model is under regulatory question: the [[a:971666|UK Gambling Commission has been investigating whether its NFT trading constitutes unlicensed gambling]], a dispute Sorare insists does not apply because it offers no regulated betting product. Bringing in the NBA and NBPA raises the stakes on that classification fight.
First-order effects
- The NBA and NBPA gain a new licensing revenue line built on digital collectibles, with the players' association sharing directly in an NFT economy rather than negotiating royalties after the fact.
- Sorare extends its platform from soccer into US basketball, putting its 2M claimed users against officially licensed NBA player cards instead of only European football rosters.
Second-order effects
- Nifty Games, which raised $12M to publish officially licensed NFL and NBA games, now shares league partners with an NFT-native rival whose collectibles carry secondary-market trading revenue that traditional licensed games lack.
- Other North American leagues face pressure to match the NBA's structure — player associations become co-sellers of digital likeness rights rather than passive licensors, reshaping how fantasy-game licenses get priced.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, league licensing splits into two tracks — conventional game publishers paying flat fees versus blockchain platforms paying recurring deals tied to trading volume — with gambling regulators like the UK Commission effectively deciding where collectible speculation ends and regulated betting begins.
The trend: Major sports leagues are converting official licenses into blockchain-based fantasy and collectibles revenue streams, with gambling regulators set to determine how far that category can stretch.