Swiss NFT-based investment platform FANtium bags €2M to democratise athlete financing

Zug, Switzerland-based FANtium, an athlete investment platform based on NFTs, announced on Tuesday that it has raised €2 M in a private pre-seed funding from prominent web3 business angels, including Sandbox COO & co-founder Sebastien Borget, Brian O’Hagan, Itamar Lesuisse, and Anand Agarawala of Spatial.

Also, 2020 US Open champion  Dominic Thiem, and Lucas Von Cranach, who started OneFootball, gave the company their support. 

The pain point FANtium is solving

Founded in 2022, FANtium is a team of sports and web3 enthusiasts who claim to be democratising athlete financing, enabling fans to directly invest in athletes and participate in the financial success of their athletes. The model is quite similar to music NFT marketplaces that sell song rights as NFTs. 

Fans who care about an athlete should also be able to share in their real-world earnings from prize money and sponsorships. 

Connect between Athletes and fans

The company says that a unique perks programme connects fans with the athlete in a whole new way, and unlocks valuable emotional value for the fans as they become part of the athlete’s close community. There is also the option to invest in an athletes’ career earnings as well as their seasonal earnings. 

FANtium’s platform allows athletes to tokenise a certain amount of prize money for future seasons and sell it to fans as NFTs. So, athletes can get money up front that they can use to hire a fitness coach or physiotherapist.

Through this, FANtium is solving a major challenge facing young talents – finances. There are individual sports, such as tennis, golf, racing, and so on, that require strong financial support. The company wants to make athlete investments a new type of asset and then expand to other types of sports rights. 

Jonathan Ludwig, co-founder and CEO of FANtium, says, “A lot of young talents are forced to retire from the sport in early stages because they have trouble affording their career. Even finding a supporter or sponsor can be very tough.”

“If you think about it, it doesn’t make sense that only companies have access to money. There are billions of sports enthusiasts in the world who would love to invest in these athletes and become part of their journey. By connecting these talents with sports enthusiasts, we are making the sport more equal because as a young athlete, your success will no longer depend on your financial background,” he adds.

Huddling the regulations 

With the latest crypto regulations, it remains to be seen whether these NFTs will be considered securities and the ramifications this may have for both platforms and users. FANtium seems to be trying something new by launching the platform in a safe way in Switzerland. 

Ludwig says, “We believe that regulation will be good for the NFT industry overall, as it provides trust and transparency for NFT owners. The dynamic and fragmented regulatory environment with specific requirements in each jurisdiction will remain one of our biggest challenges in the next few years, especially since our goal is to provide frictionless access to athlete investment in a compliant way.”First-ever athlete drops are scheduled for Q4 of this year, and the company plans to leverage athletes’ communities to attract early sports fans. Users can currently sign up for early access on the website.