Social game developer GreenPark Sports has announced a $31 million Series B funding round led by Terraform Capital, including existing investor Galaxy Interactive, new investor FTX associate Alameda Research, and others. The investment will support the company in its first non-fungible token (NFT) drop.
Founded by three former CEOs of major platforms, Chad Hurley (Youtube), Nick Swinmurn (Zappos) and Ken Martin (Blitz marketing), the startup aims to create a virtual sports universe or metaverse.
Through GreenPark’s platform, fans create a character-like avatar and use it to interact with other users and participate in experiences provided by the app. Fans can compete against each other in predicting game outcomes based on data provided by GreenPark, play mini mobile games, digitally socialize with other avatars, and earn rewards based on the games and prediction performance.
The NFT technology comes through a partnership with Immutable, which created the first Layer 2 NFTs on Ethereum. In-game assets such as clothing and other accessories will also likely launch in the future.
As of now, GreenPark has partnerships with three leading sports entities: NBA, La Liga, and League of Legends Championship Series. Both NBA and La Liga have long-term contracts with Dapper Labs for minting in-game moments as NFTs and La Liga also has a league-wide deal with Sorare for players cards as digital assets.
However, these other offerings feature real players as opposed to the personalized animated characters offered by GreenPark.
La Liga also has a licensing agreement with Electronic Arts (EA), which seems to be looking to expand into the blockchain and NFTs space. However, EA revealed that selecting player-based teams across its range of sports games represents 29% of its total revenues.
The NBA’s current video game agreement is with Take Two subsidiary 2K. There’s some crossover between GreenPark and these games, but it’s not significant because of the more extreme animated characters. GreenPark’s focus is more on social games.
“GreenPark Sports is committed to creating the de facto new fan experience, providing unique and innovative ways to engage today’s modern sports fans,” says Ken Martin, co-founder and CEO, GreenPark Sports. “We’ll continue to push even further with GreenPark Sports as a fan-first approach that presents new expansive social experiences for them to connect, celebrate and activate their fandom into a multi-sport metaverse.”
