Scorestars, a Tallinn-based basketball fan engagement platform, recently secured €725K in a seed funding round led by Trind VC, Startup Wise Guys, 3 Comma Capital, and Estonian angel investors. The platform enables fans to collect digital cards of their beloved athletes and participate in a fantasy game, offering prizes from VIP experiences to gadgets. With the funding, Scorestars plans to expand its operations to new markets, execute marketing campaigns, and recruit talent to solidify its position as the go-to “second screen” for sports fans, aiming to engage a younger audience by providing real-life experiences as rewards and amplifying the platform’s voice in the sports community.
Scorestars has revolutionized fan engagement by intertwining the thrill of collecting digital cards featuring beloved athletes with an immersive fantasy game. Their platform allows users to curate virtual basketball teams, amass digital athlete cards, and vie for captivating prizes, fostering an enthusiastic community of sports aficionados. The company’s commitment to attracting younger audiences to professional sports through real-life experiences as rewards is evident, positioning Scorestars as a pivotal voice within the sports realm.
Currently entrenched in European domestic basketball leagues, Scorestars’ vision extends beyond, with multi-year partnerships inked with prominent entities like the Turkish, Israeli, Lithuanian, and Basketball Champions League. As they steadily expand, Scorestars’ objective to bridge the gap between professional sports and younger demographics continues to resonate, garnering support and cultivating a thriving community around their innovative platform.
“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.
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!”
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