France-based game publisher Ubisoft just launched One Shot League, a new free-to-play fantasy soccer game powered by crypto assets.
One Shot League was developed by the Ubisoft Strategic Innovation Lab in collaboration with Sorare, an Ethereum-based fantasy soccer game built around collectable cards in the form of NFTs.
They’ve partnered with the Jupiler Pro League, the professional soccer league of Belgium. The 2020-2021 soccer season will be used to test the beta version of the game and encourage feedback from users.
Users build five-player teams and compete with the entire community every week. Players earn points and climb the leaderboards based on the real world performance of the pro players depicted by the tokens they own.
Winners of each match day will receive limited edition player cards that are usable in One Shot League and Sorare, giving players the chance to collect rare cards and build strong teams in either game.
The Jupiler Pro League has five weeks of gameplay left, and players who join now will receive 25 Sorare common cards for free, and can use five per game week. Players joining in the following weeks will receive 20 common cards.
Sorare is cross compatible with One Shot League, with players able to access the game through a Sorare account. Players are able to port over Sorare digital player cards from participating leagues and receive boosts in One Shot League.
Sorare features 100 officially licensed teams and leagues, where players collect, buy, sell and use digital player cards to operate fantasy football teams. Cards differ in rarity and most sell for around $5 to $10, however an ultra rare one-off Cristiano Ronaldo card recently sold for $102,000 on Feb. 21.
Sorare published a blog saying players had the chance to win rare cards:
"We’ve worked with Ubisoft to reward the best and most strategic managers, both on the matchday leaderboard and the season leaderboard. For the final season leaderboard, expect some custom Sorare rare cards and some cool jerseys & swag provided by our friends at the Jupiler Pro League for the top-ranked managers…"
Ubisoft are no strangers to the crypto world, they partnered with NFT market place Enjin back in 2018, and also partnered with EOS-based game distribution platform Ultra in 2019.
Collectors in One Shot League will be hoping to replicate the success of those in NBA Topshot, with one collector now holding almost $7 million dollars worth of Topshot NFTs after initially investing only $600.