Fanatics, a sports e-commerce startup, raised another round of funding for one of its endeavors on Thursday, as the company seeks to diversify its revenue streams beyond retail.
Candy Digital, the company founded by Fanatics, raised $100 million in a Series A round and is now valued at $1.5 billion.
Among the major investors are SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Insight Partners, and National Football League Hall of Fame inductee, Peyton Manning. Full details of their investments were not disclosed.
Here comes Candy
Candy Digital launched last June during the boom of sports nonfungible tokens. Unlike digital currencies like bitcoin, NFTs are linked to a blockchain, which is a digital ledger.
This effectively creates an unhackable certificate of authenticity for each NFT. For this reason, sports leagues are attracted to the technology, and several league commissioners expect that NFTs will help redefine ticketing models.
Candy Digital will operate its NFT goods on the Ethereum blockchain and will compete in the sports NFT industry with Dapper Laps.
In 2018, the Canada-headquartered company leveraged digital collectible items by creating the National Basketball Association’s product.
NBA Top Shot sales soared last February, and earlier this month, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that Dapper had renewed the league’s license rights.
A whopping $7 billion valuation
Dapper also acquired the rights to the NFL in September.
Dapper’s valuation has climbed to more than $7 billion following repeated rounds this year.
Candy Digital is banking on a similar outcome as a result of its exclusive Major League Baseball partnership.
MLB granted Candy Digital access to the entirety of its digital catalog. This means that Candy Digital may in the future leverage rare collectible NFTs of legends such as Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson.
The company’s goal is to create a marketplace for NFTs where users may buy, trade, sell, and store them. Candy Digital’s revenue stream would come from transaction fees.
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