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With Goat Capital, Justin Kan and Robin Chan want to keep founding alongside the right teams
Justin Kan and Robin Chan have each been angel investing for more than a decade. They’re starting a new fund together now, though, to stay involved as cofounders of more startups.
Goat Capital is a hybrid incubator versus a pure seed investment firm, Chan explains. It will be writing checks ranging between roughly half a million and $3 million dollars, and it is only planning to raise $40 million — so the checks will be selective.
The offering is that “you’re going to be working with Justin and Robin,” he says, as a direct collaboration to help your company succeed. With $25 million closed already from themselves and several family offices, the fund has begun investing globally with particular interests in digital health, ecommerce, digital entertainment and gaming, robotics and climate change.
The goal is not just about being the Greatest Of All Time, Kan adds. In a startup, you “climb high heights and eat shit to get there. That tenacity is what we want.”
It’s a nod to their own successes and struggles as founders over the years, and what they have seen as investors and advisors to a wide range of companies around the world (Twitter, Xiaomi, Bird, Uber, Square, Ginkgo Bioworks, Scale.ai, Cruise, Razorpay, Xendit, Equipment Share, Wave, Teachable, Semantic Machines, Rippling, Built Robotics, etc.)
Kan was a cofounder of Justin.tv, which became Twitch as well as Socialcam. He later had an on-demand company called Exec and previously a calendar app called Kiko, both of which sold for small amounts. Most recently, he took a big shot at the traditional legal industry with Atrium, a law firm and legal software startup that raised big rounds of funding before shuttering earlier this year.
His prototype for Goat is Alto Pharmacy, a booming digital health unicorn today that the founders started in his living room.
“We do think founders should be treated like athletes, going for gold really hard… the Olympic metaphor,” Kan qualifies about the name. “That means grinding for years — and having to rest, too. I’m very passionate about mental health and wellness as part of the journey.” (More on that here.)
Chan, meanwhile, sold his gaming startup in China to Zynga a decade ago, then helped lead a failed attempt to buy Blackberry before founding Operator, a well-funded ecommerce company that closed a few years ago. During the pandemic, he helped create Operation Masks, a nonprofit that has been providing PPE across the US. He’s also an ongoing advisor to Sleeper, Bird, Expa and Flipboard.
The focus will be fully global now. Chan explains that even though you’re seeing more challenges to building a truly global company these days, there’s more space for local startups to win big.
“There’s the US internet, the China internet, the India internet, the EU internet — in some ways it makes those markets more valuable to win, like traditional media. Broadcast and cable are highly geographic but the franchise value becomes higher because of the regulatory moat.”
Chan, on that note, met Kan back when he was a director at [current TechCrunch owner] Verizon Wireless, when Justin.tv was trying to negotiate for free data. When I asked if they had worked out a deal during a phone interview, Kan said “you [expletive] didn’t.”
But it did lead to other co-investments later on, including Ramp, Workstream and others, and now this fund.
Today, Kan says that the focus on teams will be as flexible as the times. “When we started, the internet was America,” he says. “If you weren’t there, you weren’t a company. It’s been a complete reversal of that. Now teams are international, talent is international, more and more companies are building remote first — although you’d seen that before given the costs of the Bay. We have an entirely remote company in North Carolina, Grammarly in Europe… it’s more and more the norm. Smart founders are going anywhere to find talent.
For the two partners, this new fund will be about staying connected to that certain startup feeling that is elusive for anyone trying to build something great.
“There’s nothing more magical than being in the first step of a special company,” Chan says. “That glimpse of the future. We wouldn’t get the same feeling at the growth stage versus working with small teams or a single founder. I think we have the instinct.”
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Daily Crunch: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps
India continues to crack down on Chinese apps, Microsoft launches a deepfake detector and Google offers a personalized news podcast. This is your Daily Crunch for September 2, 2020.
The big story: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps
The Indian government continues its purge of apps created by or linked to Chinese companies. It already banned 59 Chinese apps back in June, including TikTok.
India’s IT Ministry justified the decision as “a targeted move to ensure safety, security, and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace.” The apps banned today include search engine Baidu, business collaboration suite WeChat Work, cloud storage service Tencent Weiyun and the game Rise of Kingdoms. But PUBG is the most popular, with more than 40 million monthly active users.
The tech giants
Microsoft launches a deepfake detector tool ahead of US election — The Video Authenticator tool will provide a confidence score that a given piece of media has been artificially manipulated.
Google’s personalized audio news feature, Your News Update, comes to Google Podcasts — That means you’ll be able to get a personalized podcast of the latest headlines.
Twitch launches Watch Parties to all creators worldwide — Twitch is doubling down on becoming more than just a place for live-streamed gaming videos.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Indonesian insurtech startup PasarPolis gets $54 million Series B from investors including LeapFrog and SBI — The startup’s goal is to reach people who have never purchased insurance before with products like inexpensive “micro-policies” that cover broken device screens.
XRobotics is keeping the dream of pizza robots alive — XRobotics’ offering resembles an industrial 3D printer, in terms of size and form factor.
India’s online learning platform Unacademy raises $150 million at $1.45 billion valuation — India has a new startup unicorn.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
The IPO parade continues as Wish files, Bumble targets an eventual debut — Alex Wilhelm looks at the latest IPO news, including Bumble planning to go public at a $6 to $8 billion valuation.
3 ways COVID-19 has affected the property investment market — COVID-19 has stirred up the long-settled dust on real estate investing.
Deep Science: Dog detectors, Mars mappers and AI-scrambling sweaters — Devin Coldewey kicks off a new feature in which he gets you all caught up on the most recent research papers and scientific discoveries.
(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
‘The Mandalorian’ launches its second season on Oct. 30 — The show finished shooting its second season right before the pandemic shut down production everywhere.
GM, Ford wrap up ventilator production and shift back to auto business — Both automakers said they’d completed their contracts with the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
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In-game app-development platform Overwolf acquires CurseForge assets from Twitch to get into mods
Overwolf, the in-game app-development toolkit and marketplace, has acquired Twitch’s CurseForge assets to provide a marketplace for modifications to complement its app development business.
Since its launch in 2009, developers have used Overwolf to build in-game applications for things like highlight clips, game-performance monitoring and metrics, and strategic analysis. Some of these developers have managed to earn anywhere between $100,000 and $1 million per year off revenue from app sales.
“CurseForge is the embodiment of how fostering a community of creators around games generates value for both players and game developers,” said Uri Marchand, Overwolf’s chief executive officer, in a statement. “As we move to onboard mods onto our platform, we’re positioning Overwolf as the industry standard for building in-game creations.”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to think of the company as the Roblox for applications for gamers, and now it’s moving deeper into the gaming world with the acquisition of CurseForge. As the company makes its pitch to current CurseForge users — hoping that the mod developers will stick with the marketplace, they’re offering to increase by 50% the revenue those developers will make.
Overwolf said it has around 30,000 developers who have built 90,000 mods and apps, on its platform already.
As a result of the acquisition, the CurseForge mod manager will move from being a Twitch client and become a standalone desktop app included in Overwolf’s suite of app offerings, and the acquisition won’t have any effect on existing tools and services.
“We’ve been deeply impressed by the level of passion and collaboration in the CurseForge modding community,” said Tim Aldridge, director of Engineering, Gaming Communities at Twitch. “CurseForge is an incredible asset for both creators and gamers. We are confident that the CurseForge community will thrive under Overwolf’s leadership, thanks to their commitment to empowering developers.”
The acquisition comes two years after Overwolf raised $16 million in a round of financing from Intel Capital, which had also partnered with the company on a $7 million fund to invest in app and mod developers for popular games.
“Overwolf’s position as a platform that serves millions of gamers, coupled with its partnership with top developers, means that Intel’s investment will convert into more value for PC gamers worldwide,” said John Bonini, VP and GM of VR, Esports and Gaming at Intel, in a statement at the time. “Intel has always prioritized gamers with high performance, industry-leading hardware. This round of investment in Overwolf advances Intel’s vision to deliver a holistic PC experience that will enhance the ways people interact with their favorite games on the software side as well.”
Other investors in the company include Liberty Technology Venture Capital, the investment arm of the media and telecommunications company, Liberty Media.
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With stadiums closed, TV networks turn to live esports broadcasts
The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out the spring seasons for professional sports and associated revenue for TV networks, but esports is filling part of that void.
Gaming companies behind titles licensed by each major league are the winners in this unexpected shift; Electronic Arts (EA) is first among them with FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live and NHL in its EA Sports portfolio and more than 100 esports events planned for 2020. The way EA, networks and sports leagues are responding to production challenges in this crisis will reshape the esports market going forward.
Millions of people sheltering in place has created a breakout opportunity for esports broadcasting:
- A large portion of the internet-using population is at home 24/7, with screens as their main entertainment outlet;
- Sports fans have few competitive live events to watch;
- Broadcasters like ESPN, CBS, and Sky lost their most valuable content for attracting live viewers and need alternative content;
- Star athletes and non-sports celebrities are stuck at home with wide-open schedules.
In late March, 900,000 viewers tuned into Fox Sports for Nascar’s iRacing series, with 1.1 million watching in early April; the network has also broadcast Madden NFL tournaments with NFL commentators and athletes. ESPN is televising NBA players facing off against each other in NBA 2K (by Take-Two Interactive) and pro drivers (and other pro athletes like Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero) are racing each other in Codemasters’ F1 2019 game. ESPN has broadcast competitive play of non-sports games with League of Legends (by Riot Games) and Apex Legends (by EA) tournaments.
To be clear, ratings for these events have varied widely, but networks and game companies are rethinking how esports is broadcast, which will advance its pop-culture appeal.
Games adapting pro sports are best bridge to non-gamers
Esports is a massively popular activity with its own large piece of turf in pop culture, but it hasn’t secured a central role. Research firm Newzoo pegs the global audience of “esports enthusiasts” at 223 million. But unlike soccer and basketball, esports is siloed because it caters to viewers who are generally avid gamers. The action is extremely fast, so commentary by a streamer rarely helps outsiders understand what is going on enough to become engaged.
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Twitch announces a new Safety Advisory Council to guide its decision-making
Amazon-owned game-streaming site Twitch announced today the formation of a new group that will guide decision-making around new policies and products: the Twitch Safety Advisory Council. The eight-person council consists of both online experts and Twitch creators, who have a deep understanding of the Twitch platform, its content and community, the company says.
“When developing this council we felt it was essential to include both experts who can provide an external perspective, as well as Twitch streamers who deeply understand creators’ unique challenges and viewpoints,” Twitch explained, in an announcement introducing the new council members. “Each member of the council was carefully selected based on their familiarity with the Twitch community and their relevant personal and professional experiences.”
Twitch says it felt the need to create a group like this to allow communities to thrive on Twitch, particularly at a time its platform is seeing record levels of engagement. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, streaming services have seen sizable increases in usage — and Twitch has been no exception.
According to recent data from Arsenal.gg, StreamElements’ analytics partner, Twitch saw 48% month-over-month growth in hours watched between March and April, including game streams and non-gaming content combined, reaching 1.65 billion hours watched last month. Year-over-year, Twitch was up by 101% in hours watched as of April, thanks to sizable growth of Twitch’s “Just Chatting” category of non-game content that alone climbed 138% year-over-year.
Twitch confirmed some of these metrics, noting hours watched were up over 50% in the past four weeks since social distancing began. It also said that, in 2019, it was seeing an average of over 4 million unique streamers per month, totaling 10 billion hours watched.
But the growth in viewers and content means there’s also a lot more to manage to keep the community safe, which is where the advisory council is meant to help.
The group will offer their input on the drafting of new policies and policy updates; the development of new products and features aimed at improving safety and moderation; the promotion of healthy streaming and “work-life balance” habits; the protection of interests from marginalized groups; and the identification of emerging trends that could impact the Twitch experience.
In its announcement, Twitch introduced the new members as follows (its words):
Alex Holmes
Alex is Deputy CEO at non-profit The Diana Award, which is a legacy to Princess Diana’s belief that young people have the power to change the world. He is the founder of the peer to peer support program Anti-Bullying Ambassadors, a network of trained young people dedicated to preventing peer on peer violence (on and offline) and bullying, particularly in schools. Alex sits on the global safety advisory boards of a number of the major social media and tech companies advising them on their approach to safety and online harms.
CohhCarnage is a Twitch Partner and one of the original variety streamers on Twitch. He plays most major releases and indie darlings and is well known for his 100% franchise playthroughs leading up to major game releases. He is also a regular host on Dropped Frames, which covers the hottest news and games on the streaming scene. CohhCarnage is known for his positive community “The Cohhilition” and his slogan “happy, helpful, respectful.”
Cupahnoodle is a partnered Twitch Ambassador and host/commentator, the Mayor of Cupton, a lover of zombies, and a music connoisseur. Her streams range from playing games, to hosting conventions and on site interviews, to providing colorful commentary at esports events.
Emma Llansó
Emma is the Director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project and leads CDT’s work to promote law and policy that support Internet users’ free expression rights in the United States, the European Union, and around the world. The Project’s work spans many subjects, including human trafficking, privacy and online reputation issues, counter-terrorism and “radicalizing” content, disinformation, and online harassment. Emma’s areas of focus include intermediary liability law, the capabilities and limitations of automated content analysis, transparency reporting, and best practices in content moderation for empowering users and online communities.
Steph has been a full time streamer since her debut playing competitive collegiate Heroes of the Storm in 2016. She was one of the first transgender streamers to ever be partnered on Twitch, and the first to bring a transgender pride flag emote to the platform. Her fight for inclusivity includes creating a competitive team composed entirely of marginalized gamers, and vehemently opposing non inclusive mechanics such as voice chat.
Dr. Sameer Hinduja
Dr. Hinduja is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University and Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. He is recognized internationally for his groundbreaking work on the subjects of cyberbullying, sexting, and social media abuse, concerns that have paralleled the exponential growth in online communication by young people. As a noted speaker and expert on teens and social media use, Dr. Hinduja also trains students, educators, parents, mental health professionals, and other youth workers on how to promote the positive use of technology. Dr. Hinduja is also the Co-Founder and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Bullying Prevention, a new peer-reviewed journal from Springer.
T.L. Taylor
T.L. Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and co-founder and Director of Research for AnyKey, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades. Dr. Taylor’s research explores the interrelations between culture and technology in online leisure environments. Her 2018 book, Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, is the first of its kind to chronicle the emerging media space of online game broadcasting.
Zizaran is a Twitch Partner who has been streaming since 2015. His streams mostly focus on ARPGs, particularly Path of Exile. He believes that Twitch has a culture you can’t find anywhere else and looks forward to helping Twitch make rules clearer and reducing community confusion, specifically when it comes to bans and suspensions on the platform.
The council’s launch isn’t just about keeping Twitch safe and welcoming. It’s also arriving at a time when Twitch is pitching itself to advertisers, whose marketing efforts have been impacted due to the cancellations of live events and sports amid the pandemic. Advertisers, burned by YouTube in the past, are looking for brand safety.
This coronavirus pandemic has increased demand from clients who have accelerated their interest in Twitch, the company recently told The Drum in an interview. In addition, the game-streaming site can help address viewers’ demand for sports content through its sports sims, and their demand for competitions to watch through esports.
On the latter front, Twitch just weeks ago launched an esports directory on its site to cater to its growing streaming audience. It also recently partnered with Comscore to bring gaming and esports stats to advertisers.
The site generated $230 million ad revenue in 2018, which increased to $300 million in 2019, according to a report by The Information. But ad rates are down in 2020 due to the pandemic. That means Twitch may gain more interest and more advertisers, but not see a significant jump in revenue to reflect that until further down the road.
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CRV’s Saar Gur wants to invest in a new wave of games built for VR, Twitch and Zoom
Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass.
His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment themes focused on the next generation of games: those built for VR, those built on top of Twitch and those built for video chat environments as a socializing tool.
TechCrunch: We’ve been in a “VR winter,” as it’s been called in the industry, following the 2014-2017 wave of VC funding into VR drying up as the market failed to gain massive consumer adoption. You think VR could soon be hot again. Why?
Saar Gur: If you track revenues of third-party games on Oculus, the numbers are getting interesting. And we think the Quest is not quite the Xbox moment for Facebook, but the device and market response to the Quest have been great. So we are more engaged in looking at VR gaming startups than ever before.
What do you mean by “the Xbox moment,” and what will that look like for VR? Facebook hasn’t been able to keep up with demand for Oculus Quest headsets, and most VR headsets seem to have sold out during this pandemic as people seek entertainment at home. This seems like progress. When will we cross the threshold?
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VCs see opportunities for gaming infrastructure startups and incumbents
As the infrastructure for developing games becomes more advanced, studios have turned to buying best-in-class technology from others instead of building everything from scratch (often with inferior quality).
This shift underpinned Unity’s rise as the most popular game engine. The current focus on games as ever-evolving social hubs that can remain popular for a decade requires investment in “live ops” to keep updating the game with new features and experiences, only adding to a game studio’s responsibilities.
There are big movements in gaming right now to make games cross-platform (not just restricted to mobile or PC or one console), incorporate new types of chat (in-game or outside of it) and to automatically remove bullies and bots among other things. Optimizing games’ virtual economies is only getting more complex as trade of virtual goods becomes increasingly popular.
All this means more opportunity for startups (and large incumbents) that provide new tools and platforms to game developers and gamers. To gauge which opportunities are prime for entrepreneurs, I asked four leading early-stage investors who focus on the gaming sector to share their analysis:
- Sam Englebardt, Galaxy Interactive
- Gigi Levy Weiss, NFX
- Amit Kumar, Accel
- Anton Backman, Play Ventures
Sam Englebardt, Galaxy Interactive
Which areas within gaming infrastructure seem firmly dominated by large incumbents, versus open for new startups to rise up?
I’m always rooting for the startup, but some of the really big and expensive infrastructure challenges seem unlikely to be solved by a startup, especially where the incumbents have a lead in time, money and the personnel they’re throwing at the problem. I’m thinking here, for example, about something like cloud computing, storage solutions, etc.
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Twitch launches an esports directory to cater to growing streaming audience
Twitch is doubling down on esports in this new era of social distancing as a number of traditional sporting events have been cancelled. The company this week introduced a new esports directory on its site that will make it easier for viewers to find live matches, information on players, games with active competition leagues, a directory of players and more.
The goal, Twitch says, is on making Twitch easier to navigate with regard to this sort of gaming content — particularly at a time when its site is seeing a surge of growth due to the COVID-19 lockdown. According to a recent report from Streamlabs, the pandemic has since pushed Twitch to reach all-time highs for hours watched, hours streamed and average concurrent viewership in the first quarter of 2020.
Notably, it surpassed 3 billion hours watched for the first time — a significant milestone.
The new esports directory will help Twitch centralize its content in an easy-to-find and easy-to-navigate section on its site.
At the top, users can click on favorite games to see matching content. Below, current live matches are featured, followed by replays and highlights further down.
Viewers will also be shown a players directory at the bottom of the page that lets you see who’s currently live.
Twitch says the directory will be populated with competitive and premier esports around the world, including ESL Katowice, Rocket League Championships Series, Twitch Rivals and the League of Legends World Championship, among others. Over time, Twitch plans to add more events, channels and pros to keep the content fresh.
In addition, users browsing the dedicated section will be recommended content based on their own viewing history, increasing the chance that they’ll find an esports stream they’ll want to watch.
However, the site is also organized for discovery, as a click on the “All Games” option lets you easily see a variety of games and recaps being offered through the site.
Twitch says the directory launched on Wednesday but is rolling out over the “coming days” — meaning, if you don’t have it just yet, check back in a bit. (The dedicated URL for the new directory is twitch.tv/directory/esports if you want to visit directly.)
Though more people are going online for gaming entertainment due to the coronavirus outbreak, the esports market overall will take a slight hit from the pandemic in the near-term.
According to Newzoo, the global esports market will generate revenues of $1,059.3 million in 2020, down from its previous estimate of $1,100.1 million. This is mainly due to coronavirus-related cancellations and postponements of live events. Twitch’s new directory is an attempt to get ahead of the trend that will see many esports events shifted to digital-only formats.
This shift will actually lead to higher streaming revenues in the future, as global quarantines send more users online and encourage new entrants to join the market. As a result, Newzoo’s forecast for team streaming revenues increased from $18.2 million to $19.9 million in 2020, and $31.6 million to $34.4 million in 2023.
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Opera Event closes $5M Series A for its esports-focused influencer platform
Today Opera Event, an influencer software service, announced that it closed a $5 million Series A. The Oakland-based startup raised the capital from new lead investor Antera, with prior investors Atlas Ventures, Everblue, and Konvoy Ventures coming along.
According to Crunchbase data, Opera Event had raised at least $1.2 million before this new round.
Opera Event is starting with a focus on influencers in the esports market, a business that founder Brandon Byrne knows well. Byrne previously worked for former esports organization Curse and served as the CFO of Team Liquid; Team Liquid is an active esports organization with players in a number of games, including League of Legends and Starcraft 2.
The startup wants to help esports teams monetize, a likely welcome effort given the industry’s historical issues with revenue generation, and reward micro-influencer fans. How it intends to do that is its core software service, one that Byrne expects will in time work for other verticals and influencer sets. Let’s explore.
Opera Event in practice
It’s perhaps best to explain what Opera Event does with a hypothetical example, built off notes from an interview with Opera Event’s Byrne. Let’s say that Alex Wilhelm Super Awesome Esports (AWSAE) is a small Starcraft 2 team — it’s just big enough to attract some sponsorship, but not as much as the team would like. However, AWSAE’s Starcraft 2 players have dedicated fans, many of whom also stream on Twitch and maintain a presence on Twitter.
By using Opera Event, AWSAE’s fans that stream can join the team’s commercial world, adding its sponsors to their Twitch pages, tweeting out the same campaigns and more. Opera Event sits between the team, its community and capital sources (brands), helping make everything click. It’s a situation that works well for Alex Wilhelm Super Awesome Esports. With its community streaming under its commercial banner, its demonstrable in-market impact (tweet impressions, minutes engaged on Twitch, etc) grows sharply. Its associate small streamers and fans get to take part in in the team’s world, and can be rewarded with things like social follows and other bits of love — all while brands can better deploy capital. (Opera Event calls this “the ability to engage and manage content creators efficiently and at scale.”)
Now AWSAE can get bigger sponsors as it can offer a bigger audience, it can share revenues or provide other succor to its fanbase, and brands can get their whatnot in front of more viewers at once.
One team that Byrne detailed had about 39 members doing around 50 million engaged minutes each month on Twitch. Using his startups software to create two affiliate programs, the same team grew to over 3,000 influencers that generated north of 450 million minutes per month of viewership. The latter set of figures are far more commercially viable.
The aggregation of small streamers is more than adding up views, it turns out. Byrne told TechCrunch that smaller esports streamers have better click through rates than the entertainment categories giants, which could help team fans and other community members that sign up as part of their Opera Event network have outsized impact on sponsor results.
Opera Event takes a material cut of deals it lands through its sales team (25% to 30% per the company) and a small cut for deals that flow through its platform but originated elsewhere (2% to 3%). The model generated around $1.8 million for the startup in 2019, and Opera Event hopes to reach $9 million in revenue this year.
Particularly important in today’s changed market, Byrne told TechCrunch that Opera Event is a quarter away from breaking even. That should keep the company safe during a downturn.
In time, Opera Event wants to add more niches to its stable. Its founder mentioned yoga as an example. Where there are influencers big and small, the startup wants to show up and help facilitate influencer commerce and collaboration.
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Players Ntwrk launches celebrity gaming channel backed by WME, Daylight and Stratton Sclavos
Emerging from the smoldering wreckage of Echo Fox and Vision Venture Partners, the investor Stratton Sclavos is rising again to launch a new esports-related venture — a gaming-focused digital network also backed by the WME talent agency and Daylight Holdings.
Tapping Daylight and WME’s roster of talent, Sclavos has created Players Ntwrk, a new gaming-focused production company that will look to compete with other upstarts angling to tap into esports and competitive gaming’s newly dominant place in the entertainment firmament.
Players Ntwrk will feature original programming, unscripted series, celebrity gameplay and live events tapping talent from music, traditional pro-sports and the esports gaming world.
Sclavos and the multifaceted talent manager and president of Daylight Holdings, Ben Curtis, dreamed up Players Ntwrk as a way to tie together disparate groups of athletes and entertainers around their shared love of gaming and entertainment. The network will initially leverage relationships with WME and Klutch Sports Group, the agency founded by LeBron James’ longtime manager, Rich Paul, to find talent for programming.
The network will launch on Tuesday at 5:00 pm Pacific for two hours of gameplay featuring the New Orleans Pelicans Guard/Forward Josh Hart and Sacramento Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox on the Players Ntwrk Twitch channel. Additional live streams will be broadcast Friday and Saturday, the company said.
Over the next 12 weeks the network will add live programming featuring all of its “First Squad” talent and experimenting with different gaming and unscripted formats. Ultimately, the network will produce between 12 and 15 hours of original programming per week by the end of the second quarter and will ramp up to 20 to 24 hours of programming per-week by the end of the year.
Initial programming is going to be devoted to charity fundraising, with proceeds going to designated charities based on direct audience donations, the company said.
Players Ntwrk’s First Squad talent roster includes:
- Professional athletes: De’Aaron Fox (Sacramento Kings), Josh Hart (New Orleans Pelicans), Jarvis Landry (Cleveland Browns) and Alvin Kamara (New Orleans Saints)
- Music and Entertainment: PARTYNEXTDOOR, Murda Beatz, producer Boi-1da, actor/former athlete Donovan Carter (Ballers)
- Creators/Streamers: KatGunn, Sodapoppin, Cash, Jesser, Jericho, Octane, Sigils, Sonii and DenkOps
Players Ntwrk joins companies like Venn, which are angling to gain a slice of the roughly 37.5 million monthly viewers that are expected to watch live streams on Twitch by the end of 2020, according to research done by eMarketer.
“The number of viewers and subscribers consuming gaming entertainment across YouTube and Twitch tops other entertainment services such as Netflix, HBO, Spotify and ESPN combined,” said Sclavos, in a statement. “Entertainment spectacle is trumping hardcore gaming competition. That kind of engagement makes it clear; gaming entertainment is the next pop culture phenomena. PLAYERS NTWRK is the only platform embracing and executing this new reality by creating original content with the most influential people who also happen to be fans themselves.”
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