Matchday, a web3 football gaming startup, has raised $21 million in a seed round led by Lionel Messi’s venture capital firm, Play Time. Courtside Ventures, Greylock, HackVC, Capricorn Investment Group, and Horizons Ventures also participated in this round.
According to their website, the company creates Casual football games for 5 billion fans.Matchday agreed into multi-year licensing agreements with FIFA and FIFPRO in November 2017. Alexia Putellas, the first female player to win consecutive Ballon d’Or Feminin and UEFA Women’s Player of the Year awards, joined the company as its first worldwide ambassador, advisor, and investor.
“Our games will be accessible for all players, and centered around true ownership of digital items that will be a point of pride for all players,” Sebastien de Halleux, Matchday’s Chief Gaming Officer said. Prior to the release of the game, the company released a Matchday Challenge: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Edition mini-game, distributed 2 million NFT player cards to nearly 600,000 users, and dropped limited FIFA World Cup Genesis cards.
The PSG player has been involved in a lot of web3 projects most notably Sorare an NFT football fantasy game, where he is brand ambassador. Messi is also involved with fan token Socios after he signed an endorsement deal worth $20 Million. He also has his official NFT collection on top of the ethernity chain. Matchday plans to launch a new category of play for soccer fans, allowing them to build their own squads and collect digital cards of their favorite players.
The monies raised will be utilized to create games that will appeal to the sport’s enormous fan base. Given the size of its fan base, soccer has a tremendous amount of untapped potential, as evidenced by the valuations of startups such as Sorare, which exceeds $4 billion.
This investment comes in the wake of a partnership between FC Barcelona and Socios.com. Read about it here.
