Fantasy football gaming company raising 580 million euros
Paris-based fantasy football game company Sorare has raised 580 million euros (USD 680 million) in a funding led by Japanese multinational SoftBank, the company announced. Sorare offers fantasy matches with players that are blockchain-based NFT cards that players buy and collect like kids collect cards of favourite players.
Sorare said the 2018 founded company is valued at USD 4.3 billion. Players buy officially licensed cards representing soccer players creating teams that play against each other.
As it is only fantasy matches, the results are based on the players’ performance in real-life. Ownership and trading of cards is in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) like cryptocurrencies and digital pieces of art.
“We think NFTs represent a new paradigm in the collectability, usability, and engagement with assets. This evolution from physical assets to digital assets is very powerful, and creates a lot of exciting potential business models”, SoftBank Group International´s president, Michel Combes, said in a statement.
Sorare said it has over 180 clubs, 6000 licensed footballers, and 600,000 registered users. ”We are innovative, and have built a model that has set the foundations for the next sports entertainment giant.”
The company said it will introduce new sports next year and that new funding means it can sign new partnerships with the ambition to have the top 20 football leagues onboard and the top 50 national teams.
An ambition is also to promote women´s sports: “Women’s sports are underrepresented, underappreciated and undervalued. We believe that NFTs can significantly accelerate the development of women’s sports. We will actively invest in this by beginning with women’s football.”
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