Omada, a Bordeaux-based non-sports gambling game, raised €7.1 million in a seed funding round.
The game, termed a “social prediction mobile game for sports lovers,” intends to use the funding to fuel international expansion following a two-year run that has resulted in 300,000 monthly users in France and 1 million globally.
Felix Capital led the Seed round, which also included 20VC, Play Ventures, F4, Motier Ventures, and several angel investors, including Xavier Niel, Tripledot Studios founder Akin Babayigit, Mediawan founder Pierre Antoine Capton, Australian cricket team captain Pat Cummins, and football legend Youri Djorkaeff’s family office.
“Omada is a brand, and a community that occupies a unique position within the App Store, at the intersection of gaming, social networking, sports and entertainment. Omada’s traction throughout the past 18 months reflects Gen Z’s desire to experience sport in an innovative way and immerse themselves in the communities of like-minded enthusiasts.
“What particularly stood out to us was their strong experience in gaming, combined with exceptional user retention and community engagement, in every country where they have established a presence.”
Julien Codorniou, Partner at Felix Capital
Omada, or team in Greek, was founded and is led by serial entrepreneur Adrien Miniatti, who established and sold Green Panda Games to Ubisoft. It is neither a gambling or betting game. In reality, it aims to achieve the opposite by providing a platform that allows for healthy sports team-related winner selection sans the dark underbelly of bookmaking, oops, betting.
Taking this compulsion breaking a step further, the platform runs campaigns such as “Ferme Ton Compte” (Operation Close Your Betting Account), “Lav’Omada” (Converting a Laundrette in the heart of Paris into the ultimate World Cup experience), and “10 balles c’est grand-chose” (“10 euros is a lot” – a reference to the average bet in France).
Instead of rewarding and using fiat money, Omada has gained traction among a GenZ audience by distributing “coins” and a ranking system on a regular basis to forecast the outcomes of football, NFL, NHL, NBA, tennis, Japanese baseball, and Formula One games/races.
The €7.1 million investment will help Omada expand deeper into the US market, where the platform has already gained traction, aided by the return of the NFL season and, presumably, the NHL pre-season, which began this past Saturday, September 23rd.
