Sorare announced a $50 million investment round led by US-based VC Benchmark

Sorare, a Paris, France-based developer of a blockchain-enabled fantasy soccer platform, announced securing a funding round totalling $50 million.

The money was raised from investors led by the US-based VC Benchmark Capital, with contributions from Accel, Alexis Ohanian, Gary Vaynerchuk and football players Antoine Griezmann, Oliver Bierhoff and Rio Ferdinand.

Sorare, founded in 2018 and led by CEO Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort, uses the Ethereum blockchain for generating unique digital trading cards representing professional soccer players that can be traded by users. The company creates digital items known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, used as digitally scarce soccer card that users collect to create fantasy teams that compete weekly.

The company says that it produces sales of about $6.5 million per month, an increase from $50,000 in January 2020. Sorare previously raised about $8 million, with a last round announced as early as December 2020.