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RECUR scores $50M to develop sports-focused NFT marketplace

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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Miami-based NFT company RECUR has just secured a $50 million Series A funding round, giving the startup a $333 million valuation. This announcement comes six months after the startup raised a $5 million seed round. The funding will apparently fuel the hiring of 150 positions.

The Series A funding was led by Web3 investors Mark Daniel and Benjamin Milstein, the latter of whom gained notoriety as an art dealer, peddling bongs that cost upwards of six figures. The family office of prominent hedge fund investor Steve Cohen also led the deal.

Cohen, who owns the New York Mets, will join RECUR’s board of directors. Previous RECUR investors include a star-studded lineup of angels including the Winklevoss Twins, Joseph Lubin (co-founder of Ethereum), and Gary Vaynerchuck, as well as sports and cryptocurrency-focused investment firms including Courtside VC and Volt Capital.

RECUR is planning to help brands and companies design and develop experiences that allow fans to buy, collect, and resell digital products such as NFTs. Zach Bruch, a cryptocurrency trader who is based in Miami, and Trevor George, a seasoned licensing executive, founded RECUR earlier this year.

“At RECUR, we are building a future where NFTs can be taken anywhere as tokens of personal expression, community membership, and fandom, among so many other use cases,” the co-founders said in a statement. “Our goal is to give fans the opportunity to own pieces of the stories and IPs they love, with real value retained across any future chain.”

They continued: “Further, we see a future where the standard for a decentralized recurring royalty is embedded, giving the creator due credit as assets are exchanged over and over again.”

RECUR is rapidly scaling. The startup has more than 150 open positions, from recruiting to marketing and engineering. The company is remote-first, and all of the jobs are open to US-based workers. RECUR reports that, on top of catalyzing their massive hiring push, this funding will enable them to bring brand experiences to market over the next year.

Along with the news of this funding round, RECUR also announced a partnership with Veritone, Inc., a company that helps organizations deploy artificial intelligence algorithms, and CLC, a collegiate trademark licensing company.

Veritone, CLC, and RECUR are teaming up together to develop NFTU.com, a marketplace for NFTs related to Pac-12 college sports.

“This new partnership between Pac-12 Networks, Veritone and RECUR will unlock new ways to deliver the college sports content fans love, now through NFTs,” said Kenden Blake, the Pac-12 Networks’ Senior Manager for Distribution and Licensing, in the announcement.

Michael Arthur, SVP at Veritone Licensing, said that “the opportunities [Veritone] see[s] through NFTs for athletes are endless.”

Arthur continued: “Working with an innovative partner like RECUR to make the Pac-12 Networks library licensable through NFTs is another way we are fulfilling our mission to make content more accessible to licensees and generate more distribution opportunities for our international library partners.”

Miami continues to be a cryptocurrency hotspot, having hosted this year’s Bitcoin Conference. RECUR’s news comes less than a month after the University of Miami announced a deal to sell NFTs of its own, in collaboration with Atlanta-based GigLabs. Also last month, Refresh Miami reported that Miami-based music tech company Glozal has moved into a 20,000-foot office in Brickell as it develops an NFT music marketplace.

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Riley Kaminer
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