580 million euros is the record sum raised by a French start-up and it is Sorare, the company founded by Nicolas Julia.

The sports entertainment champion of tomorrow

Nicolas Julia’s ambition with his start-up Sorare is clear: “To create the sports entertainment champion of tomorrow. “. When the first NFTs (non-fungible tokens or non-fungible tokens), these secure digital property certificates that authenticate a digital object, saw the light of day, Nicolas Julia saw the potential that this revolutionary technology presented. He launches Sorare, a “fantasy football” game based on the purchase and sale of rare digital cards, where play and investment are combined. With Adrien Monfort, his partner, they bet in 2017 that NFTs could change the entertainment experience in sport.

Sorare : a virtual game

The concept of Sorare is a virtual game of collecting electronic cards from football players. Users can buy football player cards, build teams and play with them, as well as invest and resell them according to their rarity. To guarantee the authenticity of each card, the start-up decided to use the Ethereum blockchain. We then speak of NFT (Non-Fungible Token) or non-convertible tokens. If investors were initially skeptical of the project, five years later, Nicolas Julia’s bet is well on its way to being met.

The biggest fundraising in the history of French Tech

At the end of 2021, Sorare completed the biggest fundraising in the history of French Tech with 680 million dollars, bringing its valuation to nearly 4.3 billion dollars. Like the booming NFT market in 2021, Sorare has increased its number of active users tenfold in one year and claims 270,000 active users for 1 million registered on the platform. After European football, Nicolas Julia is now attacking the lucrative American market and announced this May a partnership with Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States. And Sorare does not intend to stop there. . Created in 2018, Sorare has grown well. From an 8m2 office occupied by Nicolas Julia and his partner Adrien Montfort, the company now has around thirty employees who will soon be 200. Not to mention renowned investors such as French football player Antoine Griezmann.