Blockchain introduced to football leagues by Animoca Brands

TL;DR Breakdown

• Animoca Brands will use blockchain to improve football leagues. 
• Onefootball announces Series D funding round of US$300 million to fuel future global expansion.
• Dapper Labs is the frontrunner to acquire NFT rights for Premier League. 

Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based firm that is working on digital property rights for games and the metaverse, announced that it has joined forces with Onefootball Media Company based in Germany and Liberty City Ventures American venture capital firm, to create Onefootball Labs, which will enable clubs, leagues, federations, and players to release digital assets and fan-centric on blockchain technology.

With the increased usage of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), blockchain, and other metaverse-related goods by members of the footballing and athletic community as a whole, Onefootball Labs will assist in introducing more exciting items that can help everyone in this ecosystem make money.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said, “the sports world has made steady progress in leveraging the potential of NFTs and gaming in recent months, offering fans innovative digital experiences based on fundamental ideas of genuine digital ownership and decentralization.”

We are delighted to have had a role in nearly every important milestone in the creation of real digital property rights via NFTs. Bringing Web3 to the world’s most popular sport – football – through our joining with OneFootball Labs is a match made in heaven.

Yat Siu

$300 million raised in the Series D round

OneFootball announced that it had completed its Series D funding round of US$300 million to fuel future global expansion and entry into Web3. Liberty City Ventures was the lead investor with Animoca Brands, RIT Capital Partners, DAH Beteiligungs GmbH, Dapper Labs, Quiet Capital, Alsara Investment Group  Senator, and Investment Group. 

The raise validates OneFootball’s claim to be the world’s largest global football media platform, with over 100 million monthly active users. OneFootball provides a wealth of worldwide football content, including hundreds of leagues and competitions worldwide and more than 15,000 live-streamed matches and on-demand video clips by 2021.

The OneFootball Labs collaborative venture is scheduled to bring a new era of football fan consumption with accessible, cheap, and unique fan experiences that will stimulate mass adoption of blockchain technology in football. These items will be available at various pricing points so that they may be obtained by everyone. Fans will also be able to purchase and save digital collectibles simply using email and a credit card.

OneFootball will take tens of millions of football fans from Web2 to Web3 while keeping the thing our platform was founded on: a commitment to the real-world fan.

Lucas von Cranach, founder and CEO of OneFootball.

Meanwhile, Dapper Labs is the frontrunner to acquire NFT rights for Premier League football highlights, with an agreement yet to be completed. According to CryptoSlam, Dapper’s NBA Top Shot video NFTs have generated sales of around $1 billion, with a market capitalization of over $580 million per MomentRanks.