DUBAI MARCH 27 2023 / EMURGO KEPPLE VENTURES (“EKV”) – EMURGO Kepple Ventures today announced an investment in Nigerian fantasy sports company, FanBants. This is the first investment initiated by EKV, a joint venture between EMURGO Africa and Kepple Africa Ventures.
With FanBants, African football fans can create their personalized football teams and earn points based on the real-life performance of their selected players. Winners are determined in a couple of days or even hours and get cash and/or prizes, based on how they place on the leaderboard. And perhaps even more importantly, they get bragging rights. This fantasy experience empowers football fans to become “more than a fan” as FanBants’ tagline suggests.
Football is the most popular and watched sport globally, with over 5 billion fans as reported by FIFA, the global governing body of the sport. According to FIFA, Africa represents one of the largest fan bases in the world. Leveraging this passionate fandom as well as the advancements in mobile and internet infrastructure on the continent, FanBants is satisfying sports fans’ cravings by providing a fantasy sports platform that makes being a fan more fun and interactive.
Fola Folowosele, the founder and CEO of FanBants, is a graduate of Harvard Business School and has extensive experience in the sports business industry at Nike, where he held strategy & marketing roles in their US & China offices. FanBants is also supported by reputable investors including professional footballer Wilfred Ndidi, one of the best midfielders in the English Premier League, Shola Akinlade (Paystack CEO), Yasmin Belo-Osagie (Partner at Metis Capital), Lamide Adeosun, Vivek Aswani, and Andres Bilbao (co-founder at Rappi), among others. FanBants was also the first African startup accepted into the Techstars Accelerator focused on the intersection of tech, sports, and entertainment,
“EMURGO Kepple Ventures is proud to invest in FanBants as our first portfolio company. Blockchain and other digital technologies have been influencing and transforming many industries for the past several years and will continue to do so at an even greater pace in the years to come. There is a clear demand for an enhanced fan sporting experience in Africa and FanBants is well-positioned to add unique value to the average sports fan in Africa through its fantasy sports platform,” said EKV CEO Yosuke Yoshida.
“We are excited to have EMURGO Kepple Ventures along with us on this journey of building the ultimate fan destination for Africans. We are honored to be their first investment and couldn’t be more thrilled to have partners that share our vision of reimagining the future of fandom in Africa,” said FanBants Founder & CEO Fola Folowosele.
The fantasy sports market has a huge potential to grow especially in emerging markets. For example, Dream Sports, the parent company of Dream11, a leading Indian online fantasy gaming company, raised $840 million at an $8B valuation.
About EMURGO Kepple Ventures
EMURGO Kepple Ventures is a joint venture between EMURGO Africa and Kepple Africa Ventures, with the aim of providing investment-based support for Web3 startups in Africa. Our mission is to create a better world by empowering businesses and people with a more transparent and efficient system backed by blockchain technologies. We aim to accelerate this transformation by creating more collaboration and synergies between Web2 and Web3 startups, and by catalyzing the capital flow from conventional businesses and financial institutions to Web3 startups in Africa. For more information, please visit https://ekv.emurgo.africa.
About FanBants
FanBants is the ultimate fan destination for Africans. Today, we do this by offering simplified fantasy gaming experiences that entertain Africa’s passionate sports & reality tv fans. For more information, please visit https://www.fanbants.com/