What used to be the Panini albums is now Sorare for many young people.

The young French company has been offering an online platform for trading in virtual sports trading cards for almost four years.

You can just buy and sell them, but you can also put them together in teams and compete against each other in games.

Business is thriving.

Sorare recently counted more than 380,000 monthly users in 185 countries.

The company is not short of money.

At $4.3 billion, it is currently France's fifth most expensive start-up in terms of investor valuation.

With 680 million dollars, it collected more money in a round of financing last year than any company from the "French Techs" before.

Niklas Zaboji

Economic correspondent in Paris

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Because very little happens in top-class sport without exclusive rights of use, Sorare relies on exclusive partnerships with sports greats like Kylian Mbappé, clubs like Bayern Munich and sports leagues like the German Bundesliga.

The start-up now has a total of 280 partnerships with leagues and clubs around the world, and the US baseball league MLB was the first partnership outside of football this year.

In addition, prominent football stars such as André Schürrle, Oliver Bierhoff and Antoine Griezmann have joined Sorare as investors.

On Wednesday, the start-up expanded its cooperation with the German Football League (DFL) from the first to the second Bundesliga.

From now on there are also trading cards based on the blockchain technology NFT and therefore unforgeable for players from Hamburger SV or Fortuna Düsseldorf.

Fans connect with favorite players

They now also want to take the second Bundesliga "to the next level of digital fan entertainment," said Robert Klein, Managing Director of the DFL subsidiary Bundesliga International.

This markets the audiovisual media rights to the games of the licensed leagues for all platforms abroad as well as the central sponsoring rights, brand licenses and digital offers of the Bundesliga.

"We hope this is another great way for our fans around the world to connect with their favorite clubs and players," says Klein.

The DFL had only extended the partnership with Sorare for the first Bundesliga in May.

The French start-up is pleased about the interest from Germany.

“Anyone who follows the second Bundesliga knows that the fans and the quality on the pitch are ready for the top league.

Sorare, which is majority owned by the founders and employees, is already in the black.

"We have a profitable business model," Julia emphasized recently in an interview with the FAZ, pointing out that she had grown organically and was able to quickly achieve network effects through the partnerships.

But there are market observers who see more speculation than play in the platform.

Sorare is also threatened with adversity from the regulatory side.

The news channel BFM Business reported that France's gambling authority is investigating whether the trading card business is a case of sports betting in disguise.

Sorare now has until the fall to prove the opposite.

The company is prepared.

"When a company invents a new model built on an emerging technology (...) and succeeds with it, it's not surprising that it raises questions," it said.

One exchanges “proactively” with the authorities.

Should the business be classified as gambling in the future, Sorare could face higher taxes and additional requirements.

This could include checking user identity to exclude minors from the platform, although Sorare's terms of service already only allow access to adults.

According to media reports, there are also studies in other states as to whether Sorare is more a game of chance than pure fun.

In Germany, on the other hand, this is not the case.

The regional council in Darmstadt told the FAZ that "such a company is not known".

Accordingly, “no examination of the gaming law classification of the company’s purpose” is running.

The regional council is also not aware of any corresponding examination by any other gambling authority.