Forever Network Raises $2 Million To Build Their Basketball Metaverse
Australian-born digital powerhouse Forever Network has announced its ambitious plans to redefine sports experiences in the Web3 space, after closing a $2M pre-Series A funding round.
The round was led by Three Kings Capital, who’s major backers are Karl Flores, co-founder of recently acquired Esports company Unikrn, and Chris Laurent, the founder of the highly successful Australian horse racing NFT game, ZEDRun.
Forever Network’s flagship media brand is Basketball Forever, which has a cumulative cross-platform reach of 100 million per month. This makes it the biggest digital sporting brand in Australia by social actions, a title it has held for four straight years. With a focus on unique basketball content creation, the social media giant has expanded to all corners of the globe, with fans and followers in over 100 different countries.
Forever Network founder Alex Sumsky said the capital injection came at a pivotal time of growth for the business, with a proportion of the funds being allocated to two projects in the Web3 and gaming space (VOAT and Hoop Hounds), and the remainder to scaling internal operations.
Sumsky said that the capital raise was a nod to the significant growth of the company, founded in Sydney in 2015, and the respect it had garnered as a global competitor in the highly saturated media landscape.
“Since day one, the team has always been laser focused on two things: producing content that stands out from the norm, and building an evangelized community of hoops fans from all over the planet. We had a vision of Basketball Forever being the premier basketball media and social platform in the world, and we think we are well on the way to getting there.”
Sumsky also touched on Forever Network’s plans to expand into Web3 and the Metaverse, citing the unique ability to connect communities on a scale not possible with a traditional social media only approach. “I have always been a big believer in the power of global togetherness, and uniting people who have shared passions. Basketball is perhaps one of the biggest mediums through which that is actually achievable, and we’re proud to foster those connections.”
“More specifically, we are really excited by the potential of Web3 and community building in a new and evolving digital landscape. We want to drive as much value back to our fans and our community members, and make their experience as a fan far more enriching and immersive than it currently is. We’ve got two really exciting projects in the pipeline which we think will do just that.”
The first of these is VOAT — a fan engagement app which has been billed as ‘the anti-betting betting society,’ where users login and answer five questions before the first game of the NBA day tips off. Points are given for correct predictions, with daily and seasonal leaderboards offering significant prizes, adding to the perks for participants. Forever Network ran a beta of the app in the 2021 playoffs that was 5x oversubscribed by alpha testers with heavy demand from users to bring it back for the start of the 2022/23 season.
The second is Hoop Hounds, an NFT collection that gives users real-life utility, including historic NBA artifacts, tickets to NBA games, unique fan experiences, and discounts on apparel and merchandise. The team plans to use the money raised from their initial collection to begin building a 5 v 5 online game, where real-life NBA statistics are fed into the game’s backend, and users are able to play against one another for perks and unique items.
For enquiries please contact Jaden Harris — 0422561517 comms@forevernetwork.com
