The Pitch Is Red Hot

Benchmark, the venture capital firm behind Uber, Twitter, and eBay is leading a $50 million investment round in Sorare, a fantasy football game where managers can trade digital playing cards.

All The Buzz Words

Founded in 2018, Sorare allows users to collect digital cards which represent professional soccer players and create fantasy teams that compete weekly.

The digital items are known as “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs. Similar to bitcoin, an NFT represents a digitally scarce good that is authenticated by its transaction history and recorded on the blockchain. Sorare operates on Ethereum’s underlying blockchain network to secure the ownership and distribution of cards.

The company has seen its sales skyrocket 130 times to about $6.5 million this month from $50,000 in January 2020. Other investors in the round include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Barcelona striker Antoine Griezmann.

To give you a sense of just how popular these digital cards can be, a one-of-a-kind digital card of Cristiano Ronaldo sold for a record $102k earlier this week.