NCA Freezes £10m Premier League Cash Linked to Sorare

The National Crime Agency has obtained a court order freezing more than £10 million held in a Premier League bank account, with the money traced back to the league’s sponsorship contract with crypto-powered fantasy football platform Sorare. The freezing order, granted by Westminster Magistrates’ Court, adds a fresh legal headache for a company that is already fighting a UK Gambling Commission prosecution over whether its card-trading game amounts to unlicensed gambling.

What’s actually changed

The National Crime Agency obtained the freezing of £10,024,041.33 held in a Barclays account belonging to The Football Association Premier League Limited
, the company that runs English football’s top division.
The funds are believed to be linked to the Sorare contract, with the order issued by Westminster magistrates in January 2025 under the Proceeds of Crime Act
. Crucially,
there is no suspicion of wrongdoing against the Premier League itself, though the case puts the world’s richest football competition at the centre of a financial storm
.

The Sun reported that the National Crime Agency has opened an investigation into the Premier League’s crypto sponsor Sorare over suspicions of criminality
, while
Sorare, which runs a digital card game backed by stars including Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé, has denied any wrongdoing
.

This sits alongside a separate, longer-running case brought by the Gambling Commission. Sorare was charged in 2024 with providing unlicensed gambling facilities to consumers in Britain, following an investigation the regulator opened in 2021 into whether its card packs and prize-based fantasy league constituted gambling under UK law. Sorare has consistently denied that its product is a gambling service, arguing the Commission has misunderstood its business model. The company’s four-year Premier League licensing deal, reported to be worth around £30 million a year, was signed in January 2023, while the Gambling Commission’s investigation into the platform was still ongoing.

What it means for you

If you’re a football fan who has used Sorare’s platform, or simply a casino player wondering why this matters, the underlying issue is the same one that shapes every licensed gambling product you use: whether a company holds a UK Gambling Commission operating licence. If a court eventually agrees that Sorare’s model – buying digital player cards that can win cash, cryptocurrency or other prizes based on real-world results – meets the legal definition of gambling, then UK users would have been playing on an unlicensed product for years. That matters because licensed casinos and betting sites are required to offer safeguards that unlicensed platforms have no legal obligation to provide: inclusion in the GamStop self-exclusion scheme, access to independent dispute resolution if something goes wrong, deposit limit tools, and safer-gambling messaging. None of those protections are guaranteed on a platform operating outside the licensing regime, however innocuous the branding.

The NCA freezing order doesn’t change your account or your funds directly, but it’s a reminder that sports-themed digital collectible platforms marketed as fantasy games or NFT collecting can still fall squarely within gambling law, and that regulators and law enforcement can and do act against the money flowing through them.

The bigger picture

This case lands amid growing scrutiny of the Premier League’s financial ties to the betting and crypto industries more broadly, from shirt sponsorship deals with unlicensed operators to questions over due diligence when clubs and the league itself sign up commercial partners. The Gambling Commission has shown increasing willingness to pursue companies it believes are offering gambling products without a licence, whether that’s an offshore sportsbook, a crypto card game, or, as seen recently, licensed operators falling short on money-laundering and safer-gambling checks. For a competition that built a major partnership on the assumption its due diligence was sound, having ten million pounds of sponsorship-linked cash frozen by the UK’s serious crime agency is a striking illustration of how quickly a compliance question can turn into a legal one.

Sources

• Yahoo News Canada – ‘Kemi gets Tories battle ready’ and ‘Posh makes some dosh’
• Sportpress24 – Dieci milioni congelati: la Premier League nel mirino dell’inchiesta sui fondi Sorare
• Sportcal – Sorare charged by Gambling Commission after probe
• iGaming Business – Gambling Commission takes Sorare fantasy site to court for unlicensed gambling