Footium is on a mission to build the best NFT-equipped metaverse in all of soccer gaming.
NFT soccer club curator Footium closed a $3.5 million seed round led by London-based VC firm BACKED.
Founded in 2020, Footium is a multiplayer soccer management game that allows players to mint and own clubs, manage and scout their teams, kickstart youth academies, build out in-game tactics, and compete in regular games and competitions. Footium users can purchase and mint NFT players, win games for promotion up the football pyramid, win championship glory, and even watch their retired players eventually become coaches.
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Some of the additional investors in the seed round include Animoca Brands, Stride.VC, Entrée Capital, Yield Guild Games, BlackPool DAO, former pro soccer player Chris Smalling, and Biconomy co-founder Ahmed Al-Balaghi. Footium plans to use the fresh seed funding to expand its team, overhaul the flagship game’s design, and continue running its public beta test, which will expand to all club holders who have applied ahead of the official launch.
Here’s a sneak peek of a club owner’s homepage with the new design:
“Blockchain is pioneering an economic revolution in gaming by enabling gamers to participate in the economics of the games they love,” Pascal Suhrcke, an investor at BACKED, said in an official release. “Instead of spending hours grinding in single-player mode for locked, in-game rewards, Footium has built a truly multiplayer experience, in which players can realize true digital ownership and capture a fair share of economic value for their in-game achievements.”
Each club is comprised of six elements: squad, fanbase, club kits, history, academy, and stadium. Each season, every academy generates 10 new youth prospects for club owners to mint, play or sell. And in true Web3 fashion, every Footium club gets voting power on the game’s development. Those interested in buying a Footium club can do so via the company’s official OpenSea or Rarible collection pages.
Footium plans to launch its official game sometime during the second quarter of this year, and the company has been publicly sharing its roadmap. This year, it will add 2D and 3D simulations to the game, expand its championship cup and develop a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) for the community. The company is running a giveaway on Twitter to celebrate its seed round.
This investment in Footium is another big one for Animoca Brands. The eight-year-old Hong Kong-based game software company and VC firm is cutting checks left and right. Animoca Brands has made more than 65 investments into Web3-focused companies, including its participation in C2X’s $25 million funding round.
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