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The French startup Sorare has announced that it has raised an important round of funding. SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 led a Series B funding round of $ 680 million, which values the company at $ 4.3 billion.
Sorare has built a fantasy football (soccer) platform based on NFTs or non-fungible tokens. Each digital card is registered as a unique token on the Ethereum blockchain. Players can buy and sell cards from other players. Transactions are all recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.
What makes Sorare unique is that he has partnered with 180 football organizations, including some of Europe’s most famous clubs, such as Real Madrid, Liverpool and Juventus. This creates a barrier to entry for other businesses in the space.
With today’s round table, the company plans to expand into new sports, open an office in the United States, hire more people, and invest in marketing campaigns. You can expect more announcements of partnerships with professional sports organizations in the future.
In addition to SoftBank’s Vision Fund team, Atomico, Bessemer Ventures, D1 Capital, Eurazeo, IVP and Liontree are also participating in the tour. Some of the startup’s existing investors are also re-investing, such as Benchmark, Accel, Headline and various business angels.
Sorare generates income by issuing new cards on the platform. Players can then purchase these new cards and add them to their collection. They can also manage a team of players and earn points based on actual performance.
Over time, the value of a card can increase or decrease. This is why players often buy and sell cards from other players. There are even third-party websites that help you track auctions. $ 150 million in cards have been traded on the platform since January. Sorare is not reducing player-to-player transactions at this time.
Although the volume of transactions is quite large, the potential for growth in the number of users is still large. There are currently 600,000 registered users and 150,000 users who purchase a card or make up a team each month. Sales increased 51-fold between the second quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021.
“We have seen the immense potential that blockchain and NFTs have brought to unlock a new way for soccer clubs, footballers and their fans to experience a deeper connection with each other. We are delighted with the success we have had so far, but this is just the start. We believe this is a huge opportunity to create the next giant in sports entertainment, bringing Sorare to more football fans and organizations, and to present the same proven model to other sports fans and of sports in the world, ”said Nicolas Julia, co-founder and CEO of Sorare.
Sorare’s B series is a huge fundraiser, especially for a French startup. Fantastic sports games are one of the best ways to expose new people to the world of NFT. This is probably why NBA Top Shot is so incredibly popular for NBA fans.
And these platforms have become a great access ramp to get started in cryptocurrencies. It will be interesting to see if this gets more regulated in the future as more and more people start playing Sorare.
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