In the Far West of NFTs, the big money stories of virtual football

When he was a child, Cyril collected Panini stickers, these images of football players exchanged in playgrounds. “I liked to look at them, to touch them, to turn the pages of the albums in which we stuck them”, remembers this 42-year-old lawyer, supporter of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). Today, he contemplates, on his computer, the handful of cards of which he is the happy owner, failing to be able to touch them. These digital versions of the good old Panini stickers are NFTs, non-fungible tokens or “non-fungible tokens”, in other words unique digital objects, which cannot be copied or falsified. In the world of football, these are, for example, figures of champions, videos of memorable goals or reproductions of trophies and jerseys.

Cyril, not really a techno buff, discovered NFTs with the Covid-19, when confinement deprived his amateur football team of lawns. His partners offered him to play online on Sorare. “So what? » he asked them.

Sorare, a French start-up born in 2018, is the embodiment of ” the excitement around NFTs »according to the economic daily The echoes. At the start of each season, it issues 1,111 cards in NFT form for each of the footballers of its partner clubs: 1,000 so-called “communes” and free and 111 “limited”paying and numbered – i.e. one hundred “rare”ten “super rare” and one published in a single copy.

Cyril is very proud of his nugget, Evanilson de Lima, a Brazilian striker from FC Porto, from whom he acquired a rare card for 150 euros. “Six months later, I was offered 900 euros”, he is still surprised. Of course, he is a little disappointed that this young player does not appear in the ranks of the Auriverde selection at the World Cup in Qatar. But no question of selling it, because it got caught up in the game. “I am very interested in his results and his lifestyle. » It’s like on the stock market: the more the player shines, the more his rating soars.

At auction, certain unique cards reach stratospheric prices: 600,000 euros for the Norwegian Erling Haaland; 416,000 euros for PSG star Kylian Mbappé; 394,000 euros for the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo. Even the most coveted Panini stickers cannot compete: that of Ronaldo for the 2002-2003 season fetched 71,186 euros in February; a 1974 lot pairing Michel Platini and the Brazilian Pelé went for 80,000 euros on the eBay auction site.

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