Sorare, a Paris, France, NFT-based fantasy football platform, raised $680m in Series B financing giving it a new valuation of $4.3 billion.
The round was led by Softbank, with participation from Atomico, Bessemer Ventures, D1 Capital, Eurazeo, IVP and Liontree; and existing investors Benchmark, Accel and Headline, as well as football players Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand and César Azpilicueta. In addition to the investment, Marcelo Claure, CEO of SoftBank Group International and COO of SoftBank Group, will join Sorare’s Board of Directors.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth within football while also replicating its model in other sports, expand its team by hiring across key roles, and launch marketing campaigns with partners, athletes, and media companies. Sorare also plans to open its first US office soon and to launch new initiatives to support sports activities for young people and fund other startups in the ecosystem.
Founded in 2018 and Nicolas Julia, CEO, Sorare allows users, called Managers, to create lineups consisting of 5 players: a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder, a forward, and one other outfield player. Managers enter these lineups in different tournaments, each with their own entry requirements such as the age of the players or the region their club plays in. Based on the players’ performance in real life games, all entered lineups get ranked against one another in a leaderboard. The higher a Manager’s position in a leaderboard, the better the card prizes they earn. Cards come in different scarcities: Each football player has 1000 Limited cards, 100 Rare cards, 10 Super Rare cards, and a single Unique card. Managers compete against each other to collect these scarce cards on the Sorare Marketplace.
Cards are NFTs, meaning each card is unique, scarce, and its ownership is publicly verifiable via the Ethereum blockchain.
The company has over 600,000 registered users on the platform and has licensed players from over 180 football organizations, including Real Madrid, Liverpool, Juventus, the French and German Football Federation. The platform had a card sales volume of over $150 million since January 2021 across 170 countries.
FinSMEs
21/09/2021