Karate Combat is a professional sports league that focused on full-force, striking-only karate tournaments. 130 fighters compete for championship belts across 10 weight classes. The league, founded in 2017, has targeted the next generation of sports fans by tailoring content to entertain on mobile devices, free-to-watch cross-platform distribution and immersive 3D VFX environments.

When we started Lattice, I would’ve laughed at you if you told me that as a crypto focused fund we would be investing in a professional sports league. But here we are. And we couldn’t be more excited. Karate Combat is one of the most exciting visions we’ve seen for new consumer experiences enabled by Web3. We’re stoked to be backing the team alongside our friends at Bitkraft, Delphi, M13, and others.

Karate Combat is slowly decentralizing its league and transferring governance to token holders. This means that fans (through the $KARATE token) can help decide matches and league structure. They can help make key business decisions like IP licensing. And they can benefit as the league grows.

The Karate Combat team has also pioneered an innovative ‘Up Only’ gaming method where fans can stake $KARATE tokens to wager on fight outcomes. Fans who wager correctly can share in winnings from the prize pool, but losers don’t lose their principal. We think this model can massively increase fan engagement.

The Karate Combat team has been impressively executing on their vision for more than five years and we believe this financing is just the start of the second inning for them. We’re excited to be along for the ride.