OneFootball, the international soccer content portal, has raised $300 million through a Series D funding round.
The round, which has been led by Liberty City Ventures, will “accelerate OneFootball’s investments in Web3, [and] drive platform and user growth”, the platform has said.
The funding will also be used to accelerate product development and to support an expansion of its sports rights streaming portfolio.
Other support for the round came from Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, DAH Beteiligungs GmbH, Quiet Capital, RIT Capital Partners, Senator Investment Group, and Alsara Investment Group.
OneFootball has today (April 28) also announced a joint venture called OneFootball Labs to accelerate its expansion into Web3 (the distributed web).
This will enable clubs, leagues, federations, and players to “release digital assets and fan-centric experiences based on blockchain technology.”
Various top-tier soccer players, including Liverpool’s Sadio Mane and Bayern Munich’s Alphonso Davies, are among the first athletes planning to launch their own digital collectibles via OneFootball Labs.
The new venture will provide products at different price points to make them widely accessible, OneFootball has stated, with fans being able to easily purchase and store digital collectibles.
The collaboration will also allow OneFootball to scale up its own NFT marketplace, Aera. That site will “exclusively bring unique digital soccer experiences and collectibles to fans”, the platform has said.
Lucas von Cranach, OneFootball’s founder and chief executive, said: "OneFootball will take tens of millions of football supporters from Web2 to Web3, 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 Web3 businesses – will help us to go even further.
“OneFootball and OneFootball Labs will transform the digital experiences for football fans, giving them more access, more ownership and bringing them even closer to the game we all love.”
Murtaza Akbar, the managing partner at Liberty City Ventures, added: “With OneFootball’s 100 million monthly active users, we have a special opportunity to harness the benefits of blockchain for a huge community of football fans offering them products they can truly own, and bringing them closer than ever to the game they love.”
Digital collectibles agency Dapper Labs (which works alongside basketball's NBA for that league's digital collectibles marketplace) will become a strategic partner for OneFootball Labs and will provide the infrastructure and services to the new platform.
Dapper Labs’ chief business officer and co-founder, Mik Naayem, commented: “We are excited to team up with … 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 Web3 adoption for the whole industry.”
Earlier this month, OneFootball entered into a global partnership with Italian soccer’s second-tier Serie B, to support the league’s digital strategy and also entered into a new multi-territory distribution partnership for Brazilian men’s soccer’s top-tier Brasileirao.
