Oliver Bierhoff invests in start-up Sorare

The start-up Sorare once again convinces investors as a digital Panini magazine. It received 40 million euros in a financing round. A German footballer had already invested in the past.

The world of sports is discovering a new form of investment: start-ups. Several professional footballers can be found in the current financing round of the fantasy football start-up Sorare: Former national team player and DFB director Oliver Bierhoff is investing, as is French international Antoine Griezmann. However, nothing is known about the amount of the investments.

Sorare raised a total of 40 million euros in its Series A financing. The round was led by Benchmark Capital and included Accel Partners and two other business angels: US media entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuck and Alexis Ohanian, one of the co-founders of the Reddit platform.

Sorare, founded in 2018, is a kind of digital Panini magazine: users can put together a team of footballers as managers and compete against each other. Sorare buys the image rights from 130 clubs worldwide, but player cards are limited. According to the company, the blockchain technology prevents fraud and ensures that the cards are not copied. The stakes are sometimes very high. On February 21, 2021, for example, someone paid 120,000 dollars for a Cristiano Ronaldo card.

The start-up claims to be profitable, with a monthly turnover of 750,000 euros. This has already made some footballers' hearts beat faster in the past: existing investors include VC Eventures and Partech as well as André Schürrle and professional footballer Gerard Piqué.