I have had the great fortune of spending much of my career in the sports industry and the emergence of NFTs within mainstream sports is a remarkably exciting and important moment. NFTs have created new opportunities for sports fans to collect, play, trade, and support their favorite players, teams and leagues. And Sorare sits uniquely and squarely at the intersection of web3, sports fandom, and gameplay.

2018–2021: Planting the Seed

Sorare co-founders Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort predicted a shift in the sports industry — fans were demanding a stake in sports — that NFT technology was uniquely suited for. With this foresight, 2021 marked the year Sorare achieved hypergrowth.

In 2021, our team tripled in size, our community expanded to more than 1-million users in 180 countries and more than 230 partnering global soccer clubs, and our sales reached $300 million.

And to strengthen our foothold in the U.S. market, Sorare recruited myself and Michael Meltzer, former DraftKings Senior Director of Strategic Ventures to lead our first U.S. office in New York.

2022: Breaking Ground

With sports NFTs predicted to generate more than $2 billion in 2022, the year ahead is bright for the industry and for Sorare as we expand globally, including breaking new ground in the U.S.

In the first month of the year, we’re already off to the races and excited to welcome six key new hires to our growing U.S. office, who bring deep experience from industry-leading sports entertainment and technology companies:

• Kevin Fang, Senior Staff Software Engineer, formerly Senior Staff Software Engineer at Lyft
• Kathryn Hill, Director of Product, formerly Product Associate Director at Draftkings
• Jeff Zullo, Director of Product, formerly Product Management Director at ESPN
• Everett Case, Sr. Product Manager, former Senior Product Manager at ESPN
• Paige Cutlip, Director of Content, formerly Sports Media Partnerships Lead at Meta
• Mark Nelson, Motion & Graphic Designer, formerly Social Media Designer at ESPN

We’re actively recruiting world-class talent across positions with the goal to hire 100 new team members in 2022. Interested in joining our growing U.S. team? Check out our open positions and reach out!

And we’re not just expanding our team. While we started with fantasy soccer, that’s only the beginning. In 2022, we’re expanding into other U.S. sports. Stay tuned for our next play.

Breaking Ground & Expanding in the U.S. was originally published in Sorare on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.