Mercury, the College sports fan platform has secured $7.5 million funding backed by Multicoin Capital.
The funding round was also supported by investors such as Brevan Howard Digital, North Island Ventures and Crosslink Capital.
Collegiate sport fan experience platform Mercury has secured $7.5 million in a seed funding spearheaded by Multicoin Capital with participatory support from other investors including North Island Ventures, Crosslink Capital and Brevan Howard Digital.
Porter Grieve and Justin Johnson co-founded Mercury in 2021. The platform links college Sports brands to fans via its local fan experience set up. Mercury has signed at least 50 student athletes from Kentucky Athletics and has partnered with the athletics department of the University of Central Florida and Clemson University.
Grieve mentioned how Mercury has always been centred on the collegiate ecosystem because of the tribal spirit shared by college fans. Their intensity, passion and their distinct interaction with their team and players which is a deviation from what obtains in professional sports birthed Mercury. According to Grieve:Â “The NCAA [Name, Image and Likeness] rule change, that just happened at the right time for us.”
An extremely localized fan experience
Mercury gives its users fans experiences like exclusive access to private interviews with players and coaches, and limited NFT drops personally directed to every individual’s unique fan base.
In the next few weeks, Mercury is reimagining Clemson’s “tombstone tradition” on its platform. The “tombstone tradition” involves placing a tombstone in a graveyard on campus when Clemson defeats a respected opponent away from home. Describing the potential experience, Grieve says the Mercury platform will house Clemson tombstones as NFTs and allow owners access to sports experiences like meeting a player or scoring a field goal.
The targeted demography for Mercury is not the sophisticated NFT fan or those who speculate on NFTs but the simple sports fan. Grieve throws a rather details comparison on the difference between these two categories of individuals: “to me, if we were to focus on that person, that would be like the NFL focusing on people who love tickets rather than people who love football.”
Plans for web2 user experience
Grieve is positioning Mercury to mirror the semblance of the best possible web2 user experience with alternative options such as credit card payments.
The direction is setting up everything on chain for all its it’s current designs and future projections. In Grieve’s words: “we want the average sports fan, the 56-year-old alumni, to not feel like they need to understand or do a ton of reading on blockchain before they interact with one of our platforms.”
Mercury is seriously taking advantage of the Flow blockchain and the platform is also the custodian of all its assets. According to Grieve: “Over time, things will evolve and things will shift as we feel like the consumer base evolves.”
Plans for hiring
Mercury intends to initiate new partnerships with schools and connect to more student athletes with the recently secured funds.
Mercury will also improve on leadership. The platform made Adam Breneman its vice president of NIL and media recently. The sports media personality will collaborate with athletes to solidify their brands on Mercury’s platform including its podcast series (Next Up).
The co-head of Ventures at Brevan Howard Digital, Colleen Sullivan while commending Mercury praised the company’s creative depth in going beyond mere NFT collectibles. Sullivan stressed that Mercury had: “imagined, created, and delivered to top universities a net new experience for athletes and fans alike that wouldn’t be possible without the combination of blockchain technology and their deep substantive experience.
As originally reported in (https://www.theblock.co/post/178568/multicoin-backs-college-sports-fan-platform-mercurys-7-5-million-raise)
