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The digital soccer card service Sorare, building NFT tokens on Ethereum, completes a new round of investment. The french company Sorare raises 40 million euros in Serie A, notably from footballer Antoine Griezmann.
Less than a year after a first round of financing, Sorare is once again attracting capital. In July 2020, the publisher of fantasy soccer games and digital cards, raised 4 million euros. A few months later, it was 3.7 million.
On this occasion, the French company welcomed among its investors the FC Barcelona player Gerard Piqué. Sorare’s latest fund raising, a Series A, is of a completely different scale: 40 million euros.
The specialist in NFT tokens for soccer fans is now attracting the American investment fund Benchmark, but also the venture capital company Accel. Sorare points out that its historical investors, including Partech, are also in the round, as “new business angels. »
“These include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and footballer Antoine Griezmann,” the press release said. In total, Sorare has thus posted 48 million euros fundraise in less than a year.
The company added that these funds will be used to finance the acquisition of new users, recruitment, and the launch of a mobile application. All of which will further fuel the growth of its business.
As a reminder, Sorare offers a fantasy soccer game. It allows players to compose their team thanks to digital cards. These can be free. However, the company’s objective is to manage revenues through the sale of paid cards.
Sorare has licensing agreements with more than a hundred clubs, including the PSG in France. But the value then comes from rarity. The price of the cards varies according to the number of copies issued.
Some can thus be negotiated at record prices. In any case, the model proves profitable for Sorare and partner clubs. The crypto company stresses that it is “already profitable”. It also reports “explosive” growth.
Between January 2020 and January 2021, Sorare multiplied “by 70 the volume of cards exchanged on the platform”, going from 50,000 euros in January 2020 to more than 3.5 million euros last month.
Technically, the cards are therefore based on the blockchain, in this case Ethereum. This “makes it possible to collect digital objects, creating a system of rarity through “non-fungible tokens” (NFT). »