French startup Sorare raised $680 million. He operates an eponymous NFT game about football, the results of players in which depend on the performances of real athletes. According to the results of the round, the company’s valuation amounted to $4.3 billion.Sorare announced the completion of a new round of investments in its blog.
SoftBank was the main investor. Famous footballers Gerard Piqué, Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand and Cesar Azpilicueta have also invested in the project.
The “B” series round conducted by Sorare became the largest in the history of the European market in terms of attracted investments. The company will spend these funds on the purchase of new licenses, expansion of staff and promotion of the project on mobile platforms.
Sorare is an online fantasy football. Users form their own virtual team and compete with each other. The result of the matches directly depends on the results of real football players. Athletes’ cards in Sorare are sold in the form of NFT. The most expensive of them was a unique Cristiano Ronaldo card, which was sold in March for almost $ 290 thousand.
Sorare has shown great growth this year. As the company reported in an interview with VentureBeat, since January, users have bought cards worth over $ 150 million. According to the results of the second quarter, the MAU of the project increased 34 times in annual terms. Now the game has over 600 thousand registered users.
Sorare was founded in 2018. At the moment, the company employs only 30 people, but in the coming months it will open an office in the USA. Sorare also plans to expand its fantasy model to other sports next year.