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The UK’s Gambling Commission is charging the multi-billion-dollar Premier League sponsor Sorare with illegally supplying unlicensed gambling.
The French fantasy football company is due to appear in Birmingham magistrate’s court on October 4.
Its cryptocurrency-based game lets users create five-player lineups to compete for prizes using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing individual players.
It claims 4.5m users competing for cash, signed jerseys and tickets, as well as 300 licensed football club partners and teams in the US NBA and Major League Baseball, Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A.
In 2021, the UK regulator said it was investigating whether Sorare’s system was unlicensed gambling, following concerns after the collapse that year of Football Index, a betting “stock market” that collapsed, trapping £100m of customers’ money.
In November 2022, the National Gambling Authority (ANJ) of France announced that Sorare had agreed to settle concerns about gambling by strengthening access to free play. The move came as a transitional period towards legislation was planned for 2023.
A 2021 $680m fundraising round valued the company at $4.3bn, with investment firms including SoftBank.
That funding feat won it the praise of French President Emmanuel Macron on LinkedIn.
Sorare said it will fight the UK commission’s charges.
“We firmly deny any claims that Sorare is a gambling product under UK laws,” a Sorare spokesman said. "The commission has misunderstood our business and wrongly determined that gambling laws apply to Sorare. We cannot comment further whilst legal proceedings are underway.”
A Premier League spokesman referred questions to Sorare, and the commission itself said it would not be commenting further until the matter is finished.
