Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 2:50 PM on Thursday, March 28th, 2019
SPONSOR: Enthusiast Gaming Holdings Inc.
(TSX-V: EGLX) Uniting gaming communities with 80 owned and affiliated
websites, currently reaching over 75 million monthly visitors. The
company partial 2018 reported revenue of $7.4 million representing a
625% increase over the same period in 2017.
Drake — along with media and tech heavyweights Marissa Mayer, Strauss
Zelnick and others — is investing $3 million into the seed funding
round for Players’ Lounge,
an esports platform where gamers can play their favorite video games
against others for prizes straight from their living room.
Why it matters: It’s the latest example of a celebrity investing in esports. NBA superstar Chris Bosh joined
esports franchise Gen.G as a player management advisor last year. Other
big names, from Michael Jordan to Steph Curry, are investing in
professional esports teams.
Other investors include Comcast, Macro Ventures, Canaan, RRE, and Courtside VC.
The details: Players’ Lounge allows gamers to
compete in skill-based esports competitions for cash prizes. Its mission
is to create a social platform for casual gamers to connect, get
matched, and compete without having to be a pro.
This is different from platforms like Twitch or YouTube gaming that focus on streaming tournaments.
Like Instagram, Players’ Lounge is hoping to give average people a
platform to compete and win money on esports games, in hopes of
eventually popularizing winners and leveraging their influencer status
to grow the brand.
Players can compete on PS4, Xbox One or PC devices. Anyone can make
an account and deposit funds into their Players’ Lounge account via
credit card, PayPal or cryptocurrency.
Once the scores are verified, the winner receives the prize money
from the pool players invested in upfront. These are usually small sums
that players can compete for incrementally, although the company does
also host bigger tournaments.
Players’ Lounge says it gives out millions of dollars worth of cash prizes each month.
The big picture: Players’ Lounge is making it easy
for casual gamers to earn cash from esports. Otherwise, the only way to
make money in esports is to go pro, which takes a lot of time and
resources, or to become a streamer via Twitch or Youtube, which focuses
more on personality than gaming skills.
“It’s kind of like the intramural network for esports. There’s a huge community potential.”
— Austin Woolridge, cofounder and CEO of Players’ Lounge
Bottom line: Esports is still a fledgling industry
compared to professional sports, but big names are investing in it
because it’s growing so fast, and the upside looks promising.
Celebrities, and especially celebrity athletes, see this as a way to
connect with hyper-engaged sports fans, who may not have the appetite to
participate in real sports but still want to compete with peers and
develop a community around game play.
Posted by AGORACOM-JC
at 12:57 PM on Thursday, December 27th, 2018
SPONSOR: Esports Entertainment $GMBL – Esports audience is 350M, growing to 590M, Esports wagering is projected at $23 BILLION by 2020. The company has launched VIE.gg esports betting platform and has accelerated affiliate marketing agreements with an additional 42 Esports teams, bringing total to 176 Esports teams. Click here for more information
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In case you missed it, esports are big business now and competitive gamers spent 2018 continuing to capture the attention (and the money) of the traditional sports world.
Rapper Drake greets Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry following an NBA game in 2015. Dave Sandford | NBAE via Getty Images
In case you missed it, esports are big business now and competitive
gamers spent 2018 continuing to capture the attention (and the money) of
the traditional sports world.
The esports industry is on pace to bring in more than $900 million in
revenue this year, and that number could reach as high as $2.4 billion
by 2020, according
to gaming research firm Newzoo. Competitive gaming has taken such a
leap into the mainstream in recent years that even Wall Street giant
Goldman Sachs is following the industry’s growth, with the firm recently
predicting that, by 2022, the audience for esports will grow to 276 million people, putting it on par with the most popular traditional sports, including the NFL.
Unsurprisingly, the rapid growth of esports, and the vast amounts of
money and exposure at stake, has attracted a great amount of interest
from investors who want to get in on the action. Even before this year,
several big names were already investing in esports companies and teams,
including celebrities and athletes from traditional sports. Among them:
Mark Cuban, NBA Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, former MLB star Alex
Rodriguez, high-profile NFL owners Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones, and
celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Tony Robbins, and Jennifer Lopez.
Those athletes, team owners and celebrities helped pave the way for
more big names to join the ranks of esports investors in 2018, when
everyone from Michael Jordan to Drake was looking to pump more money
into the industry.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest athletes and celebrities who invested in esports in 2018:
Michael Jordan
Jordan is a basketball legend and the current principal owner of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. With a fortune that Forbes estimates is worth nearly $1.7 billion, Jordan is an active investor in the worlds of sports and technology. He owns a minority stake in the MLB’s Miami Marlins and, in the past two years, he’s invested in tech startups like smart headphones company Muzik and Gigster, the online platform for freelance web designers.
In October, Jordan took his first leap into the world of esports by leading a group of investors that put $26 million into the competitive gaming company aXiomatic Gaming, which owns the popular esports organization Team Liquid.
(Jordan isn’t even aXiomatic’s only NBA connection, as the company’s
co-executive chairman is Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards,
one of the teams Jordan played for during his NBA career.)
Jordan called esports “a fast-growing, international industry†in a statement at the time of his investment.
Drake
Drake gave away the entire $1 million budget for his new music video
The Canadian rapper (whose real name is Aubrey Graham) is not only a
Grammy-winning and charts-topping recording artist, he’s now also the
co-owner of an esports team. In October, Drake teamed up with Scooter Braun (the Hollywood manager who represents stars like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande) to invest an undisclosed amount
of money in the esports organization 100 Thieves. With their
investment, Drake and Braun also became co-owners of 100 Thieves, which
fields esports teams that compete in games like “Call of Duty†and
“League of Legends.â€
Drake is no stranger to the gaming community, either. The rapper made
waves in March, when he played “Fortnite†online with the massively
popular gaming streamer Tyler “Ninja†Blevins — a live-streamed pairing that attracted more than 635,000 concurrent viewers on the Amazon-owned video game streaming platform Twitch.
Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala
Golden State Warriors teammates Stephen Curry (L) and Andre Iguodala (R) high-five during a December 2018 game.
Scott Cunningham | NBAE via Getty Images
Curry might be a two-time NBA MVP, but his Golden State Warriors
teammate, Andre Iguodala, is the team’s star when it comes to investing
in startups. Iguodala, who Fast Company referred
to as “the NBA’s ambassador to Silicon Valley,†has invested in tech
startups like direct-to-consumer mattress company Casper while
introducing his teammates to Silicon Valley bigwigs like Salesforce CEO
Marc Benioff and venture capitalist Mary Meeker.
So, it’s no surprise that Iguodala and Curry both got involved in
esports together for the first time in 2018. In July, the pair was part
of a group that invested $37 million
in the esports organization TSM, which was founded by 26-year-old gamer
Andy Dinh and fields competitive gaming teams for games like “League of
Legends†and “Fortnite.â€
Steve Young
Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young.
Leon Halip | Getty Images
NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young was also in on the $37 million TSM investment alongside Curry and Iguodala. (TSM said
part of the funding it raised in July will go toward building a new
15,000-to-20,000-square-foot esports facility in Los Angeles.) Young is a
prolific investor among ex-athletes, as the former 49ers star is a
managing director of private equity firm HGGC, which oversees over $4
billion in investments.
Sean “Diddy†Combs
Sean Combs is a rapper, known variously as Puff Daddy, P. Diddy,
Diddy, Puff and Puffy. He was born in Harlem and raised by his mother, a
schoolteacher living in public housing. , and the family relocated to
Mount Vernon, just outside of the Bronx.Combs attended Howard University
in Washington , D.C, while simultaneously interning at Uptown Records
in New York City. The internship won out, and he dropped out of college
to focus on Uptown, where he was instrumental in developing such R&B
artists
Getty Images
The rapper formerly known as Puff Daddy and P. Diddy jumped aboard
the esports trend in November, when Combs joined a group of investors
that provided $30.5 million in funding to PlayVS. Based in Los Angeles, PlayVS is an esports league that partners with high schools
around the US to create an infrastructure that allows high school
students to represent their schools in esports competitions while trying
to land some of the growing number of collegiate scholarships now available for competitive gamers. Combs served as an angel investor in the funding round for PlayVS.
The November fundraising round actually came on the heels of a $15 million investment
in PlayVS that the esports league picked up in June from a group of
investors that included the San Francisco 49ers, Twitch co-founder Kevin
Lin, and professional athletes such as former NBA player Baron Davis
and Los Angeles Chargers player Russell Okung.
Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant #35 of the Golden State Warriors
Gregory Shamus via Getty
Much like some of his Golden State Warriors teammates (Curry and
Iguodala, above), Durant is an active investor in Silicon Valley
startups. In fact, when Durant left Oklahoma City to sign with the
Warriors in 2016, he also launched the Durant Company, his own personal startup for managing his tech industry investments, which include scooter company Lime and Postmates.
In February, Durant added an esports venture to his growing
investment portfolio when he joined a group that invested $38 million in
Vision Esports, an esports investment fund and management company
co-founded by former NBA player and actor Rick Fox, MGM Resorts
executive Chris Nordling, and the NHL’s San Jose Sharks minority owner
Stratton Sclavos. Vision Esports owns the esports team Echo Fox as well
as esports content creator Vision Entertainment and the video game
record-tracking site Twin Galaxies. Other investors in Vision Esports
include the New York Yankees, the St. Louis Cardinals, and Durant’s
business partner, Rich Kleiman.
Odell Beckham Jr.
Odell Beckham Jr. of the New York Giants
Getty Images
The All-Pro New York Giants wide receiver also joined Durant in
contributing to the $38 million fundraising round for Vision Esports in
February. Beckham, who signed a record-breaking $95 million deal with the Giants in August, says he has been an avid gamer since childhood, and he even faced off against rapper A$AP Rocky in a marketing stunt for EA Sports’ “Fifa 19†recently.