Announcing Footium’s $3.35m Seed Round
- We have raised a $3.35m Seed Round to continue building the metaverse world of Football. Footium allows players to own, manage and win with their metaverse football club!
- Investors include Backed VC, Animoca Brands, Stride.VC and Entrée Capital, along with a number of gaming guilds
- Angel investment from Chris Smalling (Ex-Manchester United and England International Football Player), Ahmed Al-Balaghi (Co-Founder of Biconomy) and SOLBigBrain (Big Brain Holdings)
- We plan to continue growing our team, integrate user feedback from our Public Beta and expand our fantastic community!
The Round
We are delighted to announce that we have raised $3.35m USD in Seed Funding to continue building the metaverse world of Football! The investment was led by London-based VC firm, BACKED, an investment firm that previously invested in Sky Mavis, the creator of the multi-billion dollar Web3 game Axie Infinity.
Additional VC funds investing in the round include Animoca Brands, Stride.VC, Entrée Capital, RLC Ventures and IVC. The round also included participation from gaming guilds; Yield Guild Games SEA, BAYZ, BlackPool DAO and Merit Circle.
We are very excited to also receive backing from Angel investors, including Chris Smalling (Ex-Manchester United and England International Football Player) who is currently participating in our beta! Other notable angel investors include Ahmed Al-Balaghi (Co-Founder of Biconomy), Michael Bentley (Co-Founder of Euler Finance) and SOLBigBrain (Big Brain Holdings).
What is Footium?
Footium is a multiplayer football management game, allowing players to own a football club, manage their team and tactics, and develop new talent through their youth academy. Footium enables players to utilise tactics and savvy spending to beat their opponents, win cup competitions and rise up the metaverse divisions, all whilst earning real-money rewards.
Notable Footium Club owners include major football media brand Copa90, Dutch Football star Nigel de Jong, international cricketers Ravi Bopara & Carlos Brathwaite and Chris Smalling. If you want to learn more about our game, make sure to check out our recently redesigned website and our how to get started with the Footium article. There is also a very strong and helpful community on our discord server to get involved with!
Here’s what some of our fantastic backers had to say!
Pascal Suhrcke, Investor at BACKED:
“Blockchain is pioneering an economic revolution in gaming by enabling gamers to participate in the economics of the games they love. Footium is doing exactly that for Football Manager — a category primed to benefit from play-to-earn mechanics.
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 realise true digital ownership and capture a fair share of economic value for their in-game achievements. Crypto native and fanatical about football, we couldn’t think of a team better placed to re-invent a game so many of us love.”
Chris Smalling, AS Roma and ex-Manchester United player:
“I’m really happy to be backing the Footium team — What they have built is a revolution in football gaming!”
Fred Destin, Founder of Stride.VC:
“What’s magical about Footium is the team’s vision of becoming a living and breathing ecosystem for football lovers. Members have direct ownership over their clubs, making it an unprecedented experience that involves players on a much deeper emotional level.”
Next steps & Our Roadmap
Following the fundraise, we plan to continue expanding our team, having already hired in some key positions over the last few months. Footium is currently being tested in our Public Beta that is due to expand to all Footium Club holders that have applied before the game launches. With the addition of more UI/UX Designers and Front End developers to the team, we have been working on a design overhaul of the game for the Footium Launch, which you can see a sneak peek of below!
Alongside the design overhaul, we will also be looking to continually add more complexity to the underlying game engine to enhance the user experience when playing the game. You can see our brand new roadmap video below to see a timeline of our development plans, which includes 3D simulation and a cross-chain Champions Cup in the future!
How to get involved!
If you are interested in buying a Footium club from the secondary market, make sure to do so from our official OpenSea or Rarible collection pages. We plan to launch the full game in Q2 2022, following our ongoing public beta which can be applied for here. Your club also allows you entry into the Footium Football League, giving you a voting power that enables you to have a say on aspects of the game’s development!
The Footium community has been outstanding with their support and passion for the project throughout. There are also a number of community-led initiatives in the works including Metaverse Studios, who have created a virtual Footium Studio where they are producing Soccer Saturday and Match of the Day style content.
You can also get involved with the community, make your club's Twitter account (there are hundreds of them now!), get your Club Owner role within the discord and start finding other people in your league to ignite rivalries with.
There will be a competition on our Twitter page with the winner receiving a Footium club and entry to the next stage of the Footium beta! We will also be giving away another beta place in our discord server so make sure to come and say hello over there as well. There will also be future opportunities to win rare players with our bi-weekly Footium quiz.
We’re Hiring!
We are always looking to add talented individuals to our team, and are currently actively recruiting for the following roles:
- 3D Avatar Artist
- Illustrator/Designer
- Full-Stack Developer
- Software Engineer
- Marketing Lead
- Operations Associate
Thank you to everyone who has supported us on the way, we can’t wait to continue this journey with you!
If you want to find out more information about Footium the best places are our Twitter, our Discord and our roadmap. If you are interested in buying a Footium club from the secondary market, make sure to do so from our official OpenSea collection page.
