The first-of-its-kind fantasy soccer game Sorare raised $680 million in Series B round taking the total value of the company to $4.3 billion. With the support of top-notch investors including SoftBank Vision Fund, LionTree, Bessemer Ventures, IVP, Hillhouse, and Atomico along with a large community spread across the world, Sorare has kicked the ball rolling for the next giant in sports entertainment.
Today marks a historic day for the sports, gaming and #NFT communities. 🚀
We're announcing our $680M Series B to build the next giant in sports entertainment! 🔥#OwnYourGame⚽ pic.twitter.com/O8OfkKfeLF
— Sorare (@Sorare) September 21, 2021
What is Sorare?
Sorare is a fantasy football platform powered by NFTs. Here, officially licensed digital cards that represent soccer players are tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain and then bought and sold on NFT marketplaces. Users can build teams by collecting the NFTs and compete against each other based on the attached player’s performance in real-life games.Â
“When my co-founder and I first laid out our vision for Sorare in the summer of 2018, our ambition was to create a new game that could unlock the limitless potential of nonfungible technology. Because of our shared passion for the beautiful game, creating a fantasy football product was the perfect place to begin our journey,” says Nicolas Julia, the co-founder and CEO of Sorare.Â
In a short space of time since inception, Sorare has successfully drawn worldwide attention to NFTs by tapping into the love for football. The sales skyrocketed 54x from Q2 2020 to Q2 2021 alone. It has over 180 clubs, 6000 licensed footballers, and 600,000 registered users as of now.Â
Early investment roundsÂ
In February, Sorare raised a $50M Series A from acclaimed venture funding companies like Benchmark, Accel and a team of reputed investors including Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand, Oliver Bierhoff, Alexis Ohanian, and Gary Vaynerchuck. The significant flow of capital helped it expedite the development of the gaming platform. It claims to have built a global team of professionals to steer the project, signed a 5-year partnership with LaLiga, added over 50 national teams and clubs, and scaled Ethereum infrastructure bringing down the carbon footprint. Â
Looking forwardÂ
As Series B wraps up, Sorare plans to initiate multiple programs that will improve the platform’s user experience and take it to more audiences. The primary goal will be to build the next-gen champion in sports entertainment using NFTs. The team will grow to fill in more roles, new partnerships will be made to onboard top 20 football leagues and top 50 national teams, and more importantly, the platform will expand to accommodate new sports. The project also has many welfare programs in the pipeline that will extend support to community-led football programs, young underprivileged entrepreneurs, and women players.
“We would like to thank the Sorare community for the journey so far. They’ve been early believers in our vision. We look forward to keep on growing together as a community, as a game, and as a company for years to come,” says Nicolas.
