Ubisoft Teams With Belgian Pro League To Develop Blockchain-Driven Fantasy Soccer Game
Blockchain technology is beginning to take off, as we saw with the 10-second video that sold for $6.6 million at auction. Simultaneously, trading cards have also taken off in certain markets, but it can be difficult to find cards and packs. Combining both ideas, Ubisoft has partnered with the Belgian Pro League to develop the One Shot League, a blockchain-based fantasy football game.
One Shot League will be a free-to-play game “in which players form a 5-player team from a previously selected deck of cards of Jupiler Pro League football players.” Each match day, a new team is selected, hence the “One Shot” name. Besides just playing the football games (soccer in the US), One Shot League players need to manage their teams and individual performances to build the best team deck they can.
According to the blog post from Pro League, if a player wins a match day, they get limited edition official Sorare trading cards, another global fantasy football (soccer) platform where players also collect, buy, sell and manage a virtual team. Based on the Ethereum network, the blockchain comes in to “establish the scarcity of digital cards and to exchange them on several dozen digital asset marketplaces.” Moreover, players will truly own their won digital cards, allowing them to use them between Sorare and One Shot.
While this is an interesting application of blockchain, Nicolas Pouard, director of the Blockchain Initiative at Ubisoft, explained that “Blockchain allows players to play with the same card in both fantasy football worlds today, but tomorrow it could allow them to enjoy it in a wide variety of games and environments, with different uses or rules – as a card, or as any sort of item.” Perhaps we will begin to see blockchain implementations in games that offer skins, loot crates, or other tradable items. For now, companies are only getting their feet wet with blockchain, but you can join One Shot here and keep an eye on HotHardware for future updates.
