The United Kingdom’s Gambling Commission has charged blockchain-based fantasy sports operator Sorare with providing unlicensed gambling facilities. The France-based company is due to appear in UK court on Oct. 4.
This is a rare move for the British agency and appears to have been three years in the making.
Fantasy competition, collectible NFTs
According to The Guardian, the Gambling Commission had previously mounted only a single prosecution since its creation in 2005. The commission provided little information in its announcement about Sorare:
“Football-themed website Sorare.com is due to appear in court next week charged with providing unlicensed gambling facilities to consumers in Britain.”
The British press quoted Sorare as saying in response:
“We are aware of the claims made by the Gambling Commission and have instructed our UK counsel to challenge them. We firmly deny any claims that Sorare is a gambling product under UK laws. The Commission has misunderstood our business and wrongly determined that gambling laws apply to Sorare.”
Sorare offers collectible digital cards in the form of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Players compete with the fantasy team they assemble in NFTs with athlete performance based on their real-world activity that week. Players’ teams’ overall success is tracked with points. Players can participate in European football, baseball and basketball competitions.
2024-2025 season Sorare basketball trading card. Source: Sorare
Sorare also produces collectible athlete card NFTs that can be bought and sold using Ether (ETH). The prices of those NFTs can rise to the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The commission took its time
The Gambling Commission opened an investigation into Sorare in October 2021. The commission declinedto make the findings of its investigation public as of July 2023, but said, “As part of our regulatory activities, we will have dialogue with operators and third parties to establish facts […] before reaching a final outcome.”
Source: Sellers UK
According to The Sorare Ramble podcast, Sorare faced similar charges in France, but settled them before the case reached court.
Founded in 2018, Sorare originally accepted only cryptocurrency from players, but changed its policy in 2023 to accept fiat to boost adoption.
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