Sports NFT news: Spain’s LaLiga Football League joins the NFT sphere with digital cards

One of Spanish soccer’s top leagues, LaLiga has announced the launch of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) of all its individual players. These NFTs will be launched in form of digital cards that can be further traded and used to play with other members’ tokens.

“We are always looking for innovative ways to offer our fans new and exciting experiences and to broaden the appeal of our competition,” said Javier Tebas, the Spanish league president.

LaLiga League NFT partnership with Sorare

LaLiga’s NFT launch is in collaboration with the French start-up, Sorare. Sorare is popular for providing a platform to participate in fantasy football tournaments with NFTs, where players can buy, sell, trade, and manage a virtual team with their digital player cards. LaLiga has signed a long-term deal with Sorare. Under this partnership agreement, LaLiga’s top players, such as Atlético Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann, Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior and FC Barcelona’s Pedri will display their tokenized versions.

LaLiga’s league president stated that the partnership “enables us to reach new audiences globally and gives existing fans additional ways they can get involved with the players and the clubs they love.” Furthermore, in a separate interview, Nicolas Julia, Sorare’s CEO, and co-founder told CNBC that, “Today is a huge milestone for us because it’s the first top five league joining the platform,”.

National Football League bans NFT deals

While Spain’s Football league is entering the NFT sphere to globalize its dominance in the Premier League. At the same time, America’s National Football League, with 32 teams, recently announced a temporary ban on crypto sponsorships. Furthermore, it also prohibited the sale of a team or individual non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This move has come as part of the league’s ongoing process of developing a strategy for sports digital trading cards and art.

“Clubs are prohibited from selling, or otherwise allowing within club-controlled media, advertisements for specific cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, other cryptocurrency sales or any other media category as it relates to blockchain, digital asset or as blockchain company, except as outlined in this policy,” The Athletic report stated the new guidelines, as read by a team official, who requested anonymity.