Estonian Scorestars has raised €725K
Estonian basketball fan engagement platform Scorestars has raised €725K. It is part of a seed round. Estonian Trind VC, Startup Wise Guys, Portugalien 3 Comma Capital, and some business angels participated in the deal. Scorestars will spend the raised funds on marketing and hiring new employees.
The startup has created a platform where fans can collect digital cards of their favorite athletes and play a fantasy game. The game draws prizes ranging from VIP services to PlayStation and iPhones.
Users can manage their collection and act as team managers, selecting the best athletes to play on the virtual basketball court. All results are automatically translated into a leaderboard based on the performance of real players.
Each user can win cards with bonuses and sell them on the market to other users. In this way, Scorestars earns income — by selling cards with increased bonuses and receiving a commission from transactions on the market.
The game has been played more than 300K times, and European basketball fans have made 2K transactions on the Scorestars platform.
The company has signed multi-year partnership agreements with the Turkish, Israeli, Lithuanian, and Basketball Champions League. Scorestars has also built a strong community to bring its young audience closer to professional sports.
Launched in 2012, Estonian Startup Wise Guys is an accelerator that invests in early-stage startups from the Baltic, Central European, and African regions. It has invested in more than 350 startups and had 13 exits. Startup Wise Guys typically invests up to €500K per startup through multiple funds, which manage €45M and are backed by more than 150 investors. The CEO of Startup Wise Guys is Cristobal Alonso.
Trind Ventures is an early-stage venture fund with an initial ticket of €0,1M-€1M, and follow-on investments up to €5M per company. The partners are Joel Aasmäe, Ivar Siimar, Kimmo Irpola, Taavi Lepmets, and Reima Linnanvirta. In September 2022, the company closed Fund II at €55M. It aimed to invest in 30–40 startups in four years.
Scorestars was founded by Marek Kesküll, Martin Lond, and Samuel Vard in 2020.
