Sorare, the French NFT-based soccer trading card game developer, has closed on a $532 million funding round with a valuation of $3.8 billion.
It has been reported that the latest funding round is expected to be led by Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank, along with participation from European venture capital firm Atomico.
However, other backers thought to be in the mix include European investment firm Eurazeo, and Blisce, a fund founded by French entrepreneur Alexandre Mars. Founded in 2018, Sorare has now 142 licensed teams from top leagues across the world, such as Liverpool from the English Premier League, Real Madrid of the La Liga in Spain, Paris Saint-German from Ligue 1 in France, and Bayern Munich of the German Bundesliga.
Nicolas Julia, the CEO of Sorare, has reportedly denied that a funding round was being conducted, in contrast to Insider’s unnamed insiders which claim the round is close to being finalized. SoftBank and Atomico are yet to comment on the reports. If confirmed, the half a billion-dollar funding round would signify a meteoric rise for Sorare in 2021, who previously raised $50 million in Series A funding in February, which included backing from Twitter, Instagram, Discord, and French soccer star Antoine Griezmann to name a few.
The report said that according to data from DappRadar, Sorare is ranked sixth on the list of top NFT collectible projects and has seen $12.37 million worth of sales volume over the past 30 days from a total of 9251 traders. Data from CryptoSlam shows the project’s tokens perform well on secondary markets too, with a rolling 30 day average of $6.4 million in sales from 6,111 buyers.
In June, the platform had stitched up its first national team licensing deals including partnerships with the German and French national teams amid the 2020 European Championship.
Thus, the firm also onboarded FC Barcelona’s star defender Gerard Piqué as a strategic advisor in December 2020, to help the platform target a young audience of soccer fans and card collectors.
Source: Cointelegraph
Comments