Following the recent funding round of $680 million, Sorare is now valued at $4.3 billion. With the funds, the platform plans to delve into other sports, onboard women’s soccer teams, and open a U.S. office.
Sorare, an Ethereum-based fantasy soccer game based on NFT trading cards, has seen a considerable increase in player numbers and trading volume in 2021, not to mention the addition of hundreds of additional licensed teams.
With the news of a $680 million investment round today, the French business put an exclamation point on its upward trajectory.
The $680 million Series B financing, which follows a $50 million Series A round disclosed in February, values the company at $4.3 billion.
SoftBank led the funding round
SoftBank, a Japanese tech and investment corporation, led this new Series B funding. SoftBank has a variety of current crypto sector contacts, primarily through its SBI Holdings financial services branch.
Sorare is now focused solely on soccer, with more than 175 licensed clubs included in the game. Sorare includes popular clubs like as FC Barcelona, Juventus FC, and Paris Saint-Germain FC, as well as the Major League Soccer Players Association in the United States—but only the players, not the teams.
Sorare’s co-founder and CEO, Nicolas Julia, told Decrypt this week that the company aims to expand into other sports.
In the coming months, it will also build a US office to “assist us in continuing to expand with fans and sports leagues” in the US, he said.
Julia stated, “We have lofty aspirations to continue building Sorare into a sports entertainment giant.” “The new capital will be used to help us continue to build a world-class team, expand to new leagues and sports, and improve our user experience, including the launch of a mobile app,” says the company.
Sorare and NFTs
Sorare is based on NFTs based on professional athletes, similar to Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot. An NFT functions as a deed of ownership for a digital item that is proven to be scarce.
In the case of Sorare, it’s a digital trading card that can be purchased and exchanged, with limited amounts of each accessible. In March, for example, one such NFT card sold for roughly $290,000 in ETH.
Sorare, unlike Top Shot, features a continuous gaming component. It’s similar to other fantasy sports in that you can select a weekly lineup of professional athletes and compete in leagues with other users, collecting points based on your players’ real-world performances.
Only the player cards you own can be used to assemble your squad in Sorare, although there are incentives in the form of rare cards and ETH.
Sorare has seen more than $150 million in trade volume since the beginning of 2021, according to the business, and has more than 600,000 registered users.
Sorare wants to bring in the top 20 soccer leagues and top 50 soccer associations from around the world, as well as women’s soccer clubs to join the men’s teams.
New investors Atomico, D1 Capital, Bessemer Ventures, Eurazeo, IVP, Hillhouse, and Liontree, as well as previous Sorare investors Accel, Benchmark, and Headline, participated in the $680 million Series B investment, which Sorare named Europe’s largest to date.
Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand, and César Azpilicueta, all professional soccer players, also invested in this round.
In February, famous investors such as entrepreneur and NFT enthusiast Gary Vaynerchuk, as well as Seven Seven Six founder and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, participated in the Series A investment.
Sorare also has a good relationship with Ubisoft, a renowned video game publisher. The company participated in Ubisoft’s Entrepreneurs Lab accelerator program, and the two firms collaborated on One Shot League, a Sorare offshoot game based on Belgium’s Jupiler Pro League, this spring.
