Scorestars raises €725K to expand their fan engagement platform to new markets
Scorestars, the basketball fan engagement platform, today announces that it has raised €725K in a Seed round led by Trind VC, Startup Wise Guys, 3 Comma Capital, and Estonian angel investors.
The Estonian company has signed multi-year partnership agreements with the Turkish, Israeli, Lithuanian, and Basketball Champions League. With the first investment, Scorestars will invest in marketing campaigns and acquire new talent to become the second screen for sports fans. The company has built a platform where fans can collect their favorite athletes’ digital cards and play a fantasy game. The game has weekly, monthly, and seasonal prizes from VIP experiences to PlayStations and iPhones.
Today, Scorestars operates in European domestic basketball leagues but in the future, we can expect to see the platform being also used by other sports fans. The company’s goal to bring younger audiences closer to the professional sport, is something the sports sphere is looking for. As Scorestars offers fans real-life experiences as rewards and is becoming the voice of the fans, they have built a strong community behind the platform which is growing day by day.
"We met the founders for the first time when the company was in the idea stage, and since then, they have achieved milestone after milestone. Without any outside funding, the founders managed to attract a great team and build a strong community around Scorestars. We are eager to see the founders crushing their next goals, " commented Ivar Siimar, Partner at Trind Ventures.
Scorestars is a free and easy-to-use platform for sports fans. Every user who signs up gets a set of digital cards on their account, and by playing the fantasy game, the platform offers a way to collect more and more cards. Users can manage their collection and act as managers of the team as they select their favorite and possibly best-performing athletes to the virtual basketball court. All scores are automatically translated into a leaderboard based on the real-life performances of the players.
Every user has the chance to win cards with bonuses and sell these on the marketplace to other users. That’s how Scorestars generates revenue – selling higher bonus cards and taking a fee from the marketplace transactions. So far, the game has been played over 300,000 times and 2,000 transactions have been made by European basketball fans on Scorestars platform. Today, most of the users are between 18 to 28 years old and over 90.8% of the user base is male. Scorestars, with a yearly userbase growth of 4000%, sees an increasing trend for female sports following audience joining the Scorestars platform.
“We are delighted to announce the closing of the Seed round! It means that our work in the sports community is recognized not only by the sports organizations and fans but also from outside. Sports fandom is rapidly growing, and we believe there’s a massive opportunity to engage the younger generation in a new, more thrilling way,” commented Marek Kesküll, CEO of Scorestars.
Fantasy sports games have been around for more than 60 years. Yet, it has had an untapped potential so far as the games haven’t been interactive and engaging enough. Scorestars has taken two proven concepts of collectible sports cards and fantasy game to merge them into a platform where users can follow the live scores, look out key statistics, have their skin in the game, trade the cards, have a talk in the community, and much more.
Karolis Paulas, Lithuanian VIP user on Scorestars.io: "I joined the Scorestars.io platform because I believe in the idea of collecting digital sports cards and managing teams against other basketball fans. In the first season, I had the skill set to win the Citadele KMT Final 4 tournament. Scorestars has an active community where I love to discuss basketball as it's my favorite sport. Scorestars.io and basketball are a perfect combination for sports fans. I invite you to join Scorestars and test your analytical skills, let's play!"
Cristobal Alonso, CEO at Startup Wise Guys, who invested 150,000€ together with 3 Comma Capital: ”Myself and Alexa met Marek more than a year ago in Tallinn after Dag mentioned that if it was basketball you need to talk to Cristobal. We felt they were into something big. His progress, persistence, and the web3 layers have made Scorestars an exciting investment from SWG side together with 3 Comma. Pedro Cerdeira, partner at 3 Comma Capital added:”We are delighted to welcome Scorestars in our joint web3 program with Startup Wise Guys. It is clear from the beginning that Scorestars has everything that is needed to be extremely successful!”
About Scorestars. Scorestars is an Estonian sports technology company based in Tallinn. The company is offering professional sports leagues a chance to engage with a younger audience with fantasy game and digital cards platform. Scorestars has raised 725K in Seed round from Trind VC, Startup Wise Guys, 3 Comma Capital and Estonian angle investors.
About Trind VC. Trind Ventures is a seed-stage venture fund focusing on startups with a consumer or community component. The fund has invested into Ready Player Me, eAgronom, Fractory, Yaga etc. Trind VC has offices in Tallinn, Helsinki and Munich.
About 3 Comma Capital. 3 Comma Capital is a next generation asset manager and Venture Capital firm dedicated to helping startups take over the tech scene with game-changing innovation and growth. We fund early-stage high potential startups with cutting-edge technology, extraordinary teams, and the ambition to change the world. Are you ready to join the revolution?
About Startup Wise Guys. As a diverse team of tech lovers, mentors, experts, and founders ourselves bound together by their passion to support founders on their entrepreneurial journey. From Startup Wise Guys portfolio, we can find Bolt, Comodule, Estateguru, Skeleton Technologies, Planet 42, Katana Technologies, Fractory and others.