Sorare Charged with Unlicensed Gambling in UK

Sorare, a fantasy sports firm has been accused of offering unauthorized gambling services in the UK. It is the first the Gambling Commission has ever taken against a blockchain-based virtual casino platform.

Headquartered in France, specifically in Saint-Mandé, the company provides fantasy games based on soccer, basketball, and baseball events wherein participants can buy and trade collectible cards as NFTs.

Sorare’s NFT Platform Deemed Illegal Gambling in UK

It has recently partnered with most of the significant sports leagues-like the ones from the English Premier League and Germany’s Bundesliga. NFTs are singular digital tokens representative of assets within the platform.

But perhaps the largest precedent-setter for future Web3 regulation is that this ruling is the first regulatory action by the Gambling Commission against a blockchain entity.

According to the official announcement:

“Sorare is charged with providing facilities for gambling without holding an operating licence contrary to section 33(1), (4), and section 36(3), (3A) of the Gambling Act 2005.”

A Day in Court: Will NFTs Be Deemed Gambling in the UK?

The company has, therefore, been ordered to appear at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on October 4 following a three-year investigation by the UK Gambling Commission. The investigation, initiated in 2021, was to investigate whether the fantasy sports firm required a gambling license to operate. For the first time ever, this will take the commission’s action against a blockchain operator-a potential determiner in how regulators approach Web3 and NFT-related companies.

The charges result from an almost three-year investigation by the regulator, which first started in 2021 to see whether the company needed a gambling license. This marks the first such case filed by the Gambling Commission against a blockchain-based platform and thus has the potential to set a legal precedent for how regulators might approach Web3 firms in the future.

This development also marks an increasing enforcement by UK regulators against suspected illicit activities involving the crypto sector, following similar recent moves against unregulated crypto ATMs.

Sorare has categorically denied that the platform constitutes a gambling product for the purposes of the laws of England and Wales, while stating that the regulator has misunderstood its business model and applied the wrong gambling laws to it.