The Fan Controlled Football League (FCF) is all fired up for its second season after just closing a $40 million Series A investment round led by Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital.
The FCF is currently the only professional sports league that empowers its fans to make key decisions for their favourite teams by voting in real-time. This includes roster management and play calling. It’s been a phenomenal success so far, with over 700’000 Twitch views during season one.
FCF Co-Founder and CEO, Sohrob Farudi stated, “This is a historic day for FCF. The backing of investors like Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital, leaders in web3, further validates our initial success and vision to build the first pro sports league for the digital age.
“FCF combines the passion and excitement of traditional football with the best of web3, digital collectibles, and play-to-earn gaming, creating a unique IRL meets URL entertainment experience that was not possible until now. Many startup football leagues never make it to a second season, and we are now pumped for Season v2.0 and v3.0 of FCF. LFG!”
The funding will be used to double the league’s team size from four to eight teams. And the new teams are owned by Bored Ape Yacht Club, Knights of Degen, Team 8OKI and Gutter Cat Gang, all part of FCF’s innovative Ballerz Collective, a first for an NFT project.
Animoca Brands Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Yat Siu added, “We’re excited to support FCF, a league that is at the cutting edge of bringing Web 3.0 and blockchain to professional sports. Having followed its successful and entertaining first season, we look forward to the groundbreaking ways that fans will be able to engage with FCF in the upcoming seasons.” Animoca Brands are best known for their The Sandbox IP, a metaverse that is making massive waves in the virtual space department.
Along with Animoca Brands and Delphi Digital, other investors include Gemini Frontier Fund, 6th Man Ventures, Jump Crypto, Red Beard Ventures, Spartan Capital, NGC Ventures, executives at GoldenTree Asset Management, and Sebastian Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox.
Additionally, all of the league’s initial Seed investors participated, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Talis Capital, Verizon Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and Basecamp Fund.
Created for the digital fans, FCF’s matches are played in a multi-purpose studio arena based in Atlanta, and is streamed live on various platforms such as DAZN, Peacock, Twitch and NBCLX.
Beasts Owner and NFL Legend, Marshawn Lynch stated, “FCF is getting they money up, securing them $40 M’s, we ready for seasons 2, 3 and some mo. And special shout out to the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Gutter Cat Gang peoples for linking up with our FCF fam. These are the types of partnerships that tell you we ain’t messing around. I can’t wait to see how the whole NFT thing takes fan engagement in the ‘game’ to a whole ‘nother level, ya feel me?” The forthcoming nine-week season is set to kick off on April 16, 2022 with eight teams stacked and ready with pro-calibre players from the NCAA, CFL and NFL programs.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
