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Soccer superstar Lionel Messi is joining Sorare as its newest ambassador. Sorare is a player-owned fantasy sports game, built on blockchain technology. Messi joins other famous athletes, like soccer’s Kylian Mbappé and tennis’ Serena Williams in this ambassadorial position.
A brief, brief history of Lionel Messi, for you readers who aren’t up on soccer lore. Messi is, arguably, one of the greatest soccer players in the world. Ever. Messi is the winner of the Ballon d’Or award seven times over. That’s like the soccer version of an Oscar. Barcelona has 35 trophies thanks to Messi. He’s been to various parts of the UEFA Champions League over 150 times.
If all that means nothing to you, it’s like this. Messi is basically the Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretkzy or Tom Brady of soccer. The guy is 35.
Sorare is planning to accelerate its game development by working with Messi. It wants to set new standards for how sports fans connect to the sports clubs and players they love.
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“We are incredibly excited and proud to have Lionel Messi join us as in Sorare,” said Sorare boss Nicolas Julia, in a statement to GamesBeat. “We created Sorare because we are, first and foremost, football fans, so to have one of the game’s greatest ever players join us for the next stage of our journey truly is a dream come true. This has already been an incredibly exciting year for our community, as we launch two new sports – baseball and basketball – for the first time. This partnership marks another major milestone for us and we look forward to working with Lionel as we continue to grow our community and evolve the experience we deliver to users as part of our ambition to make Sorare into the next global sports entertainment giant.”
Sorare’s expanding in a big way
Sorare is a combination of a free-to-play fantasy sports game with digital collectibles. Each card players can get is an NFT. The artificial scarcity enforced by the NFTs will, hopefully, let owners actually feel like they’ve got something special.
“Sports’ ability to inspire and excite us all is unique,“ said Lionel Messi. “Fans have always looked for ways to express their passion and get closer to the players and teams that they love and Sorare’s combination of a fantasy game with digital collectibles gives fans new ways to do that, wherever they are in the world. I believe the potential for what Sorare is building is immense and I can’t wait to see what they do next in this exciting and fast developing space.”
Since 2018 Sorare has grown to more than 2 million users in over 185 countries. It works with over 300 different sports teams and organizations. Sorare is more than just soccer these days, with moves into both the NBA and MLB.
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