British regulator takes Sorare to court
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2 Oct 2024 •
Reading time: 2 minutes The NFT platform Sorare, which focuses on football, has gotten into serious trouble. The company will appear in court in the United Kingdom in early October. It is being sued by the UK Gambling Commission. The reason? Sorare allegedly offers illegal gambling without the correct licenses.
Sorare was founded in 2019 and is actually a mix of several popular concepts Fantasy sports, football cards, cryptocurrency, and FIFA Ultimate Team. On Sorare, players buy digital football cards of real football players and put together their own team. They do this by using their own cryptocurrency that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Sorare fights back and denies the accusations
It is no surprise that Sorare didn’t agree with the charges. In a response to NEXT.io, a spokesperson for the company said that they will fight the charges from the UK Gambling Commission. Sorare believes that the commission misunderstands the company and has wrongly labeled it as a gambling platform.
“We strongly deny that Sorare is a gambling product under UK law. The UK Gambling Commission has misinterpreted what we do. We have engaged our legal team to challenge this.”
According to Sorare, their platform simply does not fall under UK gambling laws, but the company does not want to say more at this time.
The UK Gambling Commission has been monitoring Sorare for some time
This is not the first time that the British regulator has looked at Sorare. Almost three years ago, the UK Gambling Commission started an investigation into the platform. Shortly after Sorare entered into a partnership with the Spanish La Liga and the German Bundesliga. At the time, the regulator questioned whether Sorare had the correct licenses to trade in their digital football tickets.
Sorare has always maintained that they are not doing anything wrong. They were already open to a conversation with the authorities at the time and promised to cooperate fully. But despite their good intentions, the British regulator now seems determined to take the case to court.
The platform has grown considerably and now works with major football competitions. Such as the Premier League and the Eredivisie. Top footballers such as Kylian Mbappé and Antoine Griezmann are also involved with Sorare. The company even raised $680 million during an investment round. With which it definitely put itself on the map.
However, Sorare now has a major problem. The UK Gambling Commission has decided to prosecute the company because it does not have licenses to offer gambling services. On October 4, Sorare must answer to the court in Birmingham. Until the case is concluded, the UK Gambling Commission will not comment further.