Rumble Kong League is a video game that combines play-to-earn with NFT ownership with high-profile investors.
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World’s shortest elevator pitch: “Rumble Kong League is a 3v3 basketball NFT-enabled game. We’re a sports Metaverse.”
Company: Rumble Kong League. “The core characters in the game and everything is really centered around the Rumble Kongs. They’re the narrative-driven main characters of our world.”
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Year founded: 2021
Website/App: https://www.rumblekongleague.com/
Funding round to date: “We closed a $4.5 million Seed round in late 2021 that was led by JDS Sports.”
Who are your investors? “Our investors are JDS Sports, CAA Sports, IDEO CoLab, Framework Ventures, Paul George, Animoca Brands, SkyVision Capital, Victory Creative Group. Angels like The Sandbox co-founders, Sébastien (Borget) and Arthur (Madrid).”
Are you looking for more investment? “Not right now.”
Tell us about yourself, co-founder Nick Vale: “Most of my background is in the traditional indie game development realm, with a mix of crypto. Back when Xbox indie games were all the craze, this is pre-game engine days, I built two games specifically, one of which was Total Miner. Grew that to be the No. 1 best-selling Xbox indie game of all time. Went on to do another game called Miner of Duty. Think like a janky, early Fortnite without a game engine. We grew that to be the No. 3 best seller. From there, I got really involved in the crypto space. I had known about Bitcoin early but didn’t really do anything. In 2014, we were trying to do this sports betting concept. At the time, sports betting was very frowned upon anywhere. So, Bitcoin was the perfect way to do it. We scrapped the idea. But this notion of peer-to-peer money in blockchain tech fascinated me and I went really deep down the rabbit hole from both the research and personal investment standpoints. In 2017, I learned about NFTs through CryptoKitties.
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This was both of my worlds colliding. Gaming assets, to me, it just made sense in terms of true player ownership. I went full-time into this space later that year at The Sandbox Game, where I was for about two and a half years building out a variety of initiatives on the marketing and product sides primarily. I met (Rumble Kong League CEO) Marcus (Bläsche) at The Sandbox. We were on the same team. He had built one of the first NFT renting and lending protocols called reNFT with our other co-founder and CTO Nazariy (Vavryk). Marcus came to me with this idea for a game, a 3v3 NFT-enabled game. He was looking for people to help on the tech and product fronts. I synced him up with Naz. He previously met our fourth co-founder, Sickpencil, who’s the artist and visionary behind all the art. We all hit it off and began this concept. We started touting the idea around in the space to people and founders we know and it resonated really well. It was shocking to us that nobody had explored this kind of sports genre of Web3 games and really bringing ownership and players, athletes and brands, all in one place, under one roof, to engage and ultimately entertain with each other.”
Who are your co-founders/partners? “We’re four initial co-founders from all over the world. I’m from Arizona. Sickpencil (Le’Jon LaMon) is from L.A. The other two co-founders, Naz and Marcus, are from London and France, respectively. What sets us apart is our blend of experience across a variety of industries. Marcus and I come from the gaming background. Marcus has 10-plus years in traditional Web2 gaming from Activision, Wargaming, Blizzard. He really understands game development. He turned to crypto about a year and a half or two ago when he came to The Sandbox. I have the indie game experience, less of the AAA title, more community-driven games with a much deeper and broader crypto experience. Naz, our CTO, comes from an insane tech background. He was building algorithmic trading bots for hedge funds in London for years and learned about crypto and was like, ‘I can do this myself instead of building trading bots for hedge funds.’ He’s arguably one of the best smart contract developers I’ve seen and is very mathematically driven. Sickpencil has a huge background in art and creative visuals. He’s been a street graffiti and digital artist for some time. He’s done murals throughout Los Angeles, from Nipsey Hussle murals to custom basketball courts. He really understands street culture and ultimately is bred by it. All of us mixed together in this pot bring so much from crypto, traditional gaming on the AAA side, on the indie side and on the tech front.”
How does your product work? “At its core, we’re a game. Rumble Kong League is a 3v3 basketball game where the players, Kongs, are NFTs you own on the court. There are a lot of layers to it. There’s a way for any type of player, NFT collector, whatever it is, to engage with the game. You could be a gamer who wants to play a fun and engaging, nostalgic, retro meets futuristic technology basketball game. Think like NBA Jam meets NBA Street meets new-age Cyberpunk. That’s the vibe we try to push. You could be somebody who owns and collects NFTs and is more interested in that. How do we then onboard that gamer to further ownership where they don’t need to own a wallet or understand blockchain? That’s what we’re trying to push is gaming being that onboard to the next billion users to Web3. Or you could be super engaged. At the top, we have the Kongs. These are people that are running clubs, which are the teams, think of it like a franchise model within the Rumble Kong League where the RKL is essentially acting as the NBA. These are our highest-level engaged players building out teams, participating in tournaments. But the overall product is this gaming ecosystem that’s bringing ownership back to the players.”
What problem is your company solving? “The problem we’re solving is ownership. We’ve seen the traditional gaming industry and we know how studios really profit and extract from users, and you’re stuck with a bunch of assets you don’t actually own. If they want to shut them off, they can shut them off in a very centralized manner. We’re trying to bring ownership and a fun and engaging experience to players.”
What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Our product costs nothing at the core. As we release the game–it’s scheduled for release later this year–gamers can get involved without owning a wallet or NFTs. The cost to get involved at a higher level depends on those NFT floors. A Kong is about 0.75 ETH, which is the highest level of play. At its core, our game will be accessible to millions of users, anyone from any walk of life, on both mobile and web.”
How are you marketing your product? “Our product has been pretty community-driven, grassroots marketing. As we start to go to market that will ramp up, but we did our initial NFT mint in 2021. That was driven by the community and the narrative within the space. It’s people getting excited about this experience we wanted to build out. We’ve always operated with community first in mind through natural word of mouth and that has allowed us to level up and see a lot of these brands, athletes, etc. that we’re acquiring, like Steph Curry bought Kongs, Paul George bought Kongs and then invested in the company. We have quite a bit of NBA players that own Kongs organically because it’s a fun way for them to get involved. We’ve seen large brands and athletes get very excited about entering the RKL. For example, we teased the beginning of something very exciting that will be happening in collaboration with Gatorade. Everything is compounded organically from the community.”
A post shared by Rumble Kong League (@therumblekongs)
How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “We scale through those different tiers of interactions, as the game actually releases. Right now, it costs close to an ETH to purchase a Kong and get involved. That’s a lot of money for a lot of people, so we’re introducing more ways for players to get involved, be it without a wallet, just to play the game. And how do we onboard more people? There are only 10,000 Kongs. So, how do we bring in a million people when there’s a 10,000-player limit in the most engaging ways? Last month we dropped our extended collection, which are RKL rookies. These are ways that other characters in our ecosystem can start to get introduced at lower price points, with not as many perks and utilities, but it allows people that don’t want to be as engaged but still want to get further engaged in the actual RKL to do so.”
Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “I don’t know that we have any direct competitors, necessarily. There are other sports-related projects. NBA Top Shot pioneered and brought a lot of people into the Web3 space but they’re not a game. We’re one of the first to do it in a full and engaging way. We view a lot of those projects that have toyed around in that space or Web3 games as complementary. We all have the same goal of bringing ownership back to players and bringing new entrants into this space to see why it’s important. What makes us different is our community. We have the strongest and most engaged community and that’s naturally attracted some of the biggest athletes and brands in the world. That’s a sentiment and statement as to why. It’s because of the community.”
What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “The community which has turned into the brands and partners. CAA Sports is an advisor and an investor. They represent pretty much every kind of sports-related talent or brand. Our community is the reason we’ve attracted those brands and legendary names. That’s a prime example as to why it is our people. The passion in our community is unmatched. We see user-generated content off the charts. People are creating brands within the clubs, they’re securing Fortune 500-level partnerships with their clubs, they’re doing merch drops of their own, they’re building physical basketball courts in different countries. All kinds of stuff that are just completely grassroots and we have no hands in it and it’s just our community running free.”
So, the first few sets of Rookies have been revealed!👀
Let’s kick off a debate!💯
After seeing the amazing work by @sickpencil, which of the Rookie traits is your favorite?
Comment below, along with your Rookies!👇#RKLRookies pic.twitter.com/SZSc3QgNgx
What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “A few months ago we hit our clubs drop, which was the first 50 out of 300 clubs. They’re your teams, we’re the NBA, a club is the Warriors, for instance. We did our first drop of 50, which sold out with a floor price of about 12.1 ETH, which was a huge milestone because it’s a big piece of our ecosystem. Another huge milestone was our rookies drop that expanded our user base. The rookies are 50% female and 50% male and really push forward women representation in the NFT and broader gaming space. Think of them as the G-League of the NBA. They are uniquely positioned with their traits and the art being a lot more young, playful and fun.”
Beyond the pandemic, what obstacles has your company had to overcome? “The crypto space is very short term focused. We’re lucky that our community, and we’ve seen it in the numbers, they’re diamond handed. They came in with the intent for a game that we’re building that we explained since the start, and the vision’s gotten much broader. A lot of people want a 2K-level game in three months, and a lot of people don’t understand how difficult it is to build great games. We managed that because we said from the start, and even in our white paper it says ‘It’s easy to build a game but it’s hard to build a fun game.’ Challenges are keeping your community happy, in the loop of what’s going on and making sure you’re all on the same page because your community is everything. Understanding that great things take time, rather than delivering short-term hype and speculation.”
How has your company been affected by the current economic situation, and how are you dealing with it? “I’ve been in the crypto space for a long time. We’ve seen plenty of these different bear cycles. We also have an interesting economic and political situation going on all over the world. We’re really unaffected. Our long-term vision stays the same. Some of our crypto holdings might be worth less but we only have risk on assets that we can take the risk. A lot of projects put all their eggs in one basket, and they’re seeing the effects and they’re running out of capital. We purposely prepared for these markets. We have all the funds and team necessary to continue to expand and grow. A lot of crypto companies in this climate are laying off workers and half their workforce. We’re about to double ours, we’ve just hired a ton of new people. We’re able to do that because we’ve been well prepared for these economic situations.”
What are the values that are core to your brand? “Community is the core. It’s at the heart of everything we do. Our community has supported us since day one. The reason we’re here, the reason brands are entering and players are excited about what we’re building, the floor we have with our NFTS, it all starts with that community. Community is probably our core overall. Expression is also a huge one. How do we allow people to express themselves in this alternate digital universe? Be it through sports, fashion, music. RKL is this combination of street culture meets sports meets hip hop meets sneaker heads. When you think about basketball, you don’t need to enjoy the sport necessarily. There are all these subcultures around it. In summary, it’s community, expression and culture.”
What does success ultimately look like for your company? “Success looks like a multi-million player fun and engaging game. Beyond that, the RKL brand is not just a game, it’s this lifestyle movement. We have all this insane, real-life UGC happening from our community, be it merch drops, custom sneakers, custom basketball courts. It’s this statement of believing in this movement. For us, that success looks like RKL as a global brand with multi-million players enjoying and playing a fun and engaging experience.”
What should investors or customers know about you—the person, your life experiences—that shows they can believe in you? “I’ve been around both the gaming and crypto spaces of which we sit at the intersection. If you’ve seen how I operate in anything I’ve been involved in, it’s very transparent and honest. We share a lot of what we’re doing with the community. We share our problems, we ask for input, we get their opinions and that’s how I operate with morals over everything. Especially in this space, there’s a lot of noise, scams and con artists. We put our reputation on the line and we put everything out there for everyone to see and judge for themselves of how we operate.”
How do you differentiate in a market that so many companies want to be in? “It’s the sheer level of engagement. There are a lot of games where you can come in, play and hopefully have fun. At least that’s the promise of a lot of these Metaverses and games. With us, there are much deeper ways to engage. Within clubs, we’re seeing these native brands be built out. It’s the first time you’ve seen the technology available for users to build a brand within a brand. There are so many different areas for so many different people to get involved in with sports at the center of it all. That’s what sets us apart is that sports isn’t just a game. It’s a way of living, a way of breathing, a way of expressing yourself. The culture and movement behind sports is so much deeper and bigger in tons of countries. Not just in the U.S. Arguably, the basketball culture and movement in Asia is potentially larger. That’s what sets us apart is that culture. We have a game. We have this brand. There are so many different ways to get involved from a deeper standpoint than just ‘Let’s play the game.’”
Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at [email protected].
Photo credits: Courtesy of Rumble Kong League
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