Key Takeaways;
- Alternative sport organization FCF has announced it made $40m in Series A funding.
- The fund would be to expand the game and float NFT tokens for fans.
LAGOS (CoinChapter.com) – Fan Controlled Football (FCF), an alternative sports organization, has announced that it completed a $40 million Series A funding round led by crypto and blockchain gaming firms; Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital.
The FCF is preparing for its second season, an indoor version of American football in a seven vs. seven-player format featuring former high school, college, and professional players competing on a 50-yard field.
In the alternative sports game, fans have a major influence, including drafting the teams, calling offensive plays during games, and even owning parts of the franchises.
Organizers to use $40m funding launch NFT
The $40 million Series A funding the alternative sports organization got would be deployed to expanding the league from four to eight teams for the 2022 season.
More importantly, the FCF would use the fund to launch NFTs called “The Ballerz Collection.”
The four new teams to join the league in the next season would be owned by figures tied to NFT projects with the Bored Apes and Gutter Cats, Knights of Degen, and Team 8OKI.
NFT owners from those projects will have first dibs on minting an NFT from the FCF Ballerz collection before its public sale, which grants “team governance rights, play-to-earn game mechanics and unique IRL experiences” to its holders.
Existing Bored Ape Yacht Club or Gutter Cat NFT hodlers will also receive a 50% discount on Ballerz NFT purchases if they buy tokens corresponding to those teams. The NFTs are slated to drop late this month, and the public minting cost per token will be 0.1776 Ether (ETH) or roughly $580.
Also, the organizers would expand access to the league which was exclusively streamed on Twitch last year. The second season will be broadcast on NBC and Peacock in a bid to expand its audience.
Fan Controlled Football, evolution in hands of fans
Animoca Brands chairman and co-founder Yat Siu, during an interview, said that “Fan Controlled Football is an evolution where the game is in the hands of the fan from the get-go and introducing blockchain technology will give it deeper meaning and purpose for all the fans that are playing FCF.
FCF co-founder Sohrob Farudi said the organization is “experimenting” with its format and will continue to do so to find out what works best for the fans and the league.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. But we don’t have a player’s union. We don’t have 30 owners around the table telling us no. We have one agenda. Our agenda is to be successful. We’re going to experiment to the nth degree to figure out what works and what fans love,” he said.
“The beauty of what we’re building is every sports fan has had this idea,” Farudi said. “Every sports fan has wanted to call plays for their teams, has wanted to have an input on what player gets drafted. This is not new. I think we’re the lucky guys that took a crazy shot at putting it into motion.”
