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UK Gambling Commission Warns Brits That Sorare is Unlicensed
By Shane Addinall Oct 14, 2021 IndustryUnited Kingdom online gamers received a caution from the country’s Gambling Commission regarding the fantasy football site, Sorare. They informed British players that the company is unlicensed, and its services are under investigation.Fantasy football is all the rage, but the UK Gambling Commission warns British patrons that Sorare, the Paris-based Fantasy Football company, is not in possession of a UKGC license. The NFT platform offers its gaming services to players in Great Britain and beyond where they can buy, trade and build a virtual soccer team of cards.
In an announcement on 8 October, the UKGC explains that it has come to their attention that the fantasy gaming platform is available to its citizens. The commission is currently investigating whether the services offered by Sorare constitutes gambling, which would mean the company legally requires a license.
The Gambling Commission explains that players need to be aware of their lack of protection on an unlicensed site and Sorare falls outside the scope of the country’s gambling and consumer protection regulations. Sorare sought legal advice and announced its business model does not compare to that of a gambling platform.
Sorare and Fantasy Football
In the game of fantasy football, players purchase and build a team of famous soccer players to compete in virtual leagues. Sorare presents an impressive collection of famous football players to its users, in the form of collectable cards. These cards are much like the ones people collected, traded and sold prior to the 90s, with the obvious difference of these being virtual.
Players purchase Sorare football cards using Ethereum cryptocurrency and are NFTs – non-fungible tokens. Once you collect 5 cards (at least a goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, and forward) and you are confident that you have a strong team, you may enter a league. Sorare boasts 200 officially licensed clubs like Juventus and Liverpool, and league titles like EUFA Championships.
The aim is to collect and trade a card collection and build a League-winning team. Each League has a different prize and players can see what it will be before kicking off. Winners walk away with the championship title and collectable cards or Ether. Ether is the transactional token of the Ethereum crypto network that facilitates transactional operations.
What is NFT?
NFT is the acronym used for “non-fungible token” and, in short, this is a digital collector’s item. Non-fungible tokens are unique, non-interchangeable units of data stored on a digital ledger. In comparison, a “fungible” item is something a person can trade with or exchange for something else, like currency, as it has a constant value.
Both NFTs and cryptocurrency are made from the same programming technology, i.e. Blockchain, which could confuse some people, but this is about the only connection it has with crypto. The other would be that people mostly purchase NFTs with cryptocurrency.
Forbes describes NFT’s as “digital assets representing real-world objects” like collectable football cards, art, and music. The creators and buyers transact online and the item’s blockchain coding makes it uniquely identifiable and rare. The value has everything to do with digital scarcity and NFT collections have limited runs. Each item has a unique identity code that serves as proof of ownership.
Once Bitten
Earlier this year, the UK Gambling Commission was caught up in the Football Index scandal and there is a debate on how well the regulator understood the gambling site’s business model. Could this be the reason behind the cautioning of its British citizens?
If the commission finds that Sorare requires a gambling provider license, we can only wonder what this would mean for other NFT traders.
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