A digital soccer platform, OneFootball has announced that it has raised an additional $300 million in funding to accelerate its growth into Web 3.0-based digital products such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for leagues, organisations, and players around the world.
Liberty City Ventures led the Series D round, which also included Animoca Brands and Dapper Labs, which will all become partners in a newly formed OneFootball Labs Web 3.0 joint venture.
DAH Beteiligungs, Quiet Capital, RIT Capital Partners, Senator Investment Group, and Alsara Investment also participated in the round.
OneFootball observes that its 100 million user base, combined with the active participation of a few of the major players in the evolving sports Web 3.0 space, positions it well to push the widespread adoption of blockchain-based experiences in football.
OneFootball provides its users with a variety of content, including news, scores, videos, and live soccer matches. It published 15,000 free and pay-per-view streams, as well as on-demand video clips in 2021.
OneFootball collaborates with a variety of soccer partners to help them reach new viewers and commercialise its content. According to OneFootball, several partners, such as the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and players Alphonso Davies, Raphael Varane, and Sadio Mané, plan to launch digital collectibles through its platform.
Items and collectibles will be available at a variety of price ranges and can be purchased and collected using only an email and a credit card which will minimise a process that has conventionally necessitated knowledge of digital wallets.
Yat Siu, CEO of Animoca Brands, will join the boards of OneFootball and OneFootball Labs, whereas Dapper Labs will offer the flow blockchain facilities that will produce the plotted Web 3.0 services. This includes the newly launched Aera NFT marketplace.
Lucas von Cranach, Founder and Chief Executive of OneFootball, “OneFootball will take tens of millions of soccer supporters from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 while retaining the thing our platform was built on – a commitment to the real-world fan. We’ve got big plans for the future and this successful Series D fundraising round – following long-term strategic investments in leading Web 3.0 businesses – will help us to go even further.
“We believe the future of football away from the stands and off the pitch will be decentralised and built on Web 3.0, giving back the ownership of data and digital assets to the fans. OneFootball and OneFootball Labs will transform the digital experiences for soccer fans, giving them more accessible, and more ownership and bringing them even closer to the game we all love, in a way that’s never been done before.”
Yat Siu, Chief Executive, Animoca Brands, said, “Over the last year, the sporting universe has made progress in harnessing the potential of NFTs and gaming, offering fans new digital experiences based on the important principles of true digital ownership and decentralisation. Bringing Web 3.0 to the biggest sport in the world – soccer- through our participation in the OneFootball Labs joint venture is a match made in heaven.”
Mik Naayem, Chief Business Officer and Co-founder at Dapper Labs, commented, “We are excited to team up with OneFootball to bring the biggest sport in the world to our growing Flow ecosystem. The potential of introducing more than 100 million users to relevant NFTs for the first time has the potential to be truly groundbreaking. We see this as a catalyst for mass scale Web 3.0 adoption for the whole industry.”