After the strong success with NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs plans to enter into the football fantasy gaming market by partnering with Spain’s top soccer league, La Liga.
On Wednesday, September 22, it became known that Dapper Labs had secured $250 million in the recent funding round led by Coatue. Dapper Labs is the company behind Flow blockchain that hosts the popular NFT marketplace NBA Top Shot.
As per sources familiar with the matter, the recent funding happened at company valuations of $7.6 billion. Some of the existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, GV and Version One Ventures. However, some of the big investors joining the funding for the first time were BOND and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC).
Dapper Labs has seen rapid and tremendous success with NBA Top Shots. On this NFT marketplace, fans can buy digital cards representing players and iconic moments from the play. The owners can also trade these cards on the NBA Top shot marketplace. Speaking to CNBC, Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou said:
“Part of this funding will go toward expanding functionality on NBA Top shot, developing a mobile product, and connecting the digital collecting experience with the experience of a fan showing up to a live game, or even supporting their team on social media”.
The NBA Top Shot platform has witnessed a staggering 30x growth so far in 2021. It has more than $780 million in digital collectibles traded and also over 13 million transactions. Furthermore, the NFT marketplace hosts more than 1.1 million registered accounts.
Dapper Labs: Planning to Step into Fantasy Football amid Successful Funding
After the strong success of the NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs is willing to enter the market for fantasy football. On Wednesday, Dapper Labs also announced its partnership with Spain’s top soccer league, La Liga. Its Li Liga experience will kickstart the next year in 2022.
Dapper Labs said that it will also use the new funding to support other brand-driven sports. Besides, it will support other entertainment and music-based products on the flow blockchain. Speaking of this funding, Dan Rose, Chairman, Coatue Ventures said:
“We think Dapper Labs is a leader in the space at the infrastructure level with Flow blockchain and in the application layer with NBA TopShot. We continue to be impressed by Roham’s strong leadership and vision and we could not be more proud to partner with him and the entire team at Dapper.”
The recent announcement from Dapper Labs comes in two days after French fantasy soccer NT game Sorare announced raising $680 million led by SoftBank. Sorare pegs a valuation of $4.3 billion and is another giant in this space.
It looks like Dappers Labs and Sorare will compete for the same market going ahead. Just like Dapper Labs, Sorare is also planning to expand to other sports games. The French startup said that it has received significant interest from other U.S. sports organizations.
However, both these companies have a different approach as of now with different tech stacks.
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