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Karate Combat has raised $18 million to fund its full-contact martial arts league, featuring fighters in immersive CGI environments. The league’s (mixed reality) XR technology, powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, represents the next step in combining real-time virtual effects with live sports.
The funding round supports the May 10 launch of the Karate fights app and the competition’s $KARATE token. Karate Combat is structured as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) – a first for a sports league. Fans can earn $KARATE through the app and by watching matches. The goal is to reward the league’s most active fans and gamify the experience.
Stakeholders will be able to weigh in on the direction of Karate Combat. Fans can use their tokens to support different fighters and increase potential prize pools beyond the contracted reward. Furthermore, fans can compete against each other and climb the league leaderboards.
Karate fighting in context
Bitkraft Ventures led the round, while Delphi Digital, The Operating Group, Alpha Wave Global, Hashkey, Lattice, M13, Santiago Santos, RooxieXBT and more participated. Additionally, the League’s founders, Packy McCormick’s Not Boring Funds and Keyboard Monkey, previously invested in the league.
“The value of the sports league largely stems from the quality of the competition and the passion and loyalty of the fans. Karate Combat leverages its Web3 tools and ethos to change the way fans interact with their favorite sports by building direct relationships, aligning incentives and enabling influence over every aspect of the competition. More than that, it does it with an incredibly fresh and differentiated media that strikes all its fans as ‘video games meets MMA’, making it a fun and doubly innovative new partner for Bitkraft,” said Carlos Pereira, partner at Bitkraft Ventures.
To date, the league has 4.5 million followers and broadcasts to more than 100 countries around the world. Sports leagues around the world are experimenting with XR technology and creating a new one bridge to the video game industry. Karate fighting has the following, emphasis on audience participation and XR technology to be a proving ground for the next generation of sports competitions.
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