The soccer games-focused Web3 gaming startup Matchday has announced that the company has raised $21 million in terms of seed capital for the development of a series of games.
The most striking aspect of the new project is that one of the firms that back Matchday is owned by none other than the football legend Lionel Messi.
Along with other venture capital firms like Courtside Ventures, Greylock, Capricorn Investment Group, Horizon Ventures, and HackVC, Messi’s company, Play Time Sports – Tech HoldCo LLC has also backed the firm in their upcoming project.
Apart from the Argentinian footballer, Matchday has brought in another start in association with their upcoming game series. The Spanish soccer star Alexia Putellas is also associated closely with the project as he currently serves as Matchday’s global founding father.
Lionel Messi, who currently plays for Paris Saint-Germain FC and is the captain of the Argentina national team who led them to victory at the 2022 FIFA World Cup is a football player who has made quite a few investments in the NFT world. He is one of the prominent football players who has made considerable investments in NFT.
Currently, Lionel Messi is the brand ambassador of Sorare, which is a popular NFT fantasy football game also for Socios, which is a fan token platform.
Apart from being the brand ambassador of Sorare, he has also made an investment in the game. Messi is also reported to have entered an endorsement deal with Socios, which is valued at $20 million. Apart from all these ventures, there is also an official NFT collectible launched by Lionel Messi through the Ethernity Chain Platform.
While talking about the game that was in development, the co-founder and the current CEO of Matchday, Derrick Ko said in a statement that the firm was building for an untapped audience in the football community.
He also added that the final output of the game will be optimized for casual users. Just like Derrick Ko, the chief gaming officer of Matchday, Sebastian de Halleux also shared his hope about the game.
According to him, the game will be accessible to everyone, and also that the game will focus more on true ownership of digital items that every player will be proud of.
As Matchday is in the development of its new series of games, the company has proven experience in the field of developing soccer games. The firm has received an official license from the governing body of the soccer world cup FIFA along with FIFPRO, which is the players association.
Matchday is very much confident in their upcoming project. The chief gaming officer of the firm Sebastian de Halleux has previous experience working on similar projects.
Before joining Matchday, Halleux used to work with Electronic Arts, which is also a major game publisher. While at Electronic Arts, he worked on a similar FIFA game series by the company and also on their Madden NFT franchise.
Why Football In Web3?
Statistics show that Web3 users spent around $4.3 billion on NFTs which is tied to the ownership offered by the NFTs to the user. So through their new project, Matchday is building up on their idea that ‘ownership is equal to emotion.’ So, as per this idea, blockchains have a tool that can bring ownership to football lovers.
The idea of creating the first blockchain-based football game was put forward by Matchday. The firm intended to do it with the help of experts like FIFA, the official governing body of the soccer world cup, and also with FIFPRO, which is the player’s association.
The game is also backed by some of the major venture capitalist firms including Play Time Sports – Tech HoldCo LLC, which is owned by the football legend Lionel Messi.
Matchday stated that the game would be released in 2023 and that it would be released along with an NFT-designed player card that represents different football players, which can be bought and used by the players once the game is fully released.
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The Inspiration Behind Football Games In Web3
Football is undoubtedly the most popular game in the world. The game is estimated to have a global fan range of almost 3.5 billion. Apart from the massive entertainment value, football opens the door to so many different business chances.
The chief gaming officer of Matchday has stated that according to the numbers from FIFA, the average viewership of the 2022 World Cup was around 5 billion.
Along with pointing out the popularity of football, Sebastian de Halleux also pointed out the fact that games were also very popular among people.
Statistics show that almost 3.5 billion people all over the world enjoy playing games and that people have spent more than around $2900 billion playing games, which is even larger than they spend on other forms of entertainment like music and movies.
While both these sectors are said to earn massive numbers in terms of revenue, Sebastian worked on the idea of merging the two together and that was what ultimately gave rise to the new project of Matchday.
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