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Fantasy sports start-up ASX Sports has today launched a new €750,000 funding campaign.

Paddy Power, the former head of communications at Paddy Power Betfair - now Flutter Entertainment - set up the exchange last year.

ASX integrates fantasy sports scoring with financial market technology to create the world's first sports trading exchange.

The investment round with Spark Crowdfunding will be the last chance to invest in ASX Sports pre-Series A. Last year, ASX raised €2.2m in less than a month using the equity crowdfunding platform.

To coincide with the crowdfunding campaign, ASX Sports today launched its new peer-to-peer contests, making it the first fantasy sports platform in the world to have fan contests running live during games.

The technology allows players to create their own contests, and play against friends and fellow players for real money or "sportzcoins".

It will also enable sporting celebrities, eSports gamers and social media influencers to monetise their own followers and streamers via the gaming platform.

"The launch of peer-to-peer games on ASX demonstrates our dedication to driving innovation in the fantasy sports market," ASX Sports President Paddy Power said.

"It comes at a time when our beta app has been installed more than 20,000 times, with over 30,000 contest entries across 10 of the biggest sporting leagues and competitions in the world including the NFL, NBA, EPL, MLB and the Six Nations," he said.

"In addition, our app has been ranked in the top 100 sports apps in 11 different countries now, including the US, Ireland and South Africa. On top of this, SportsPro Media named ASX among the 20 sports tech start-ups to invest in for 2022," he added.

Equity crowdfunding is a type of fundraising where small to medium-sized investors can invest anything from €100 upwards in a company in return for shares in that company.

It operates in much the same way as Dragons' Den where companies pitch for investment and the "crowd" decides if it wishes to invest or not.

Based in Dublin, Spark Crowdfunding has more than 9,500 investors on its database and has raised funds for 28 Irish start-ups over the last three years.

Source: RTE