SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Matcherino, an eSports engagement platform, announced today $1.25 million in funding led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Vulcan Capital and angels. Matcherino is building a platform that promotes streamers while giving fans the ability to discover and fund matches they want to see. eSports, or competitive video gaming, has an audience size of 200 million viewers and is expected to grow to 335 million by 2017. The average fan spends more than 20 hours a week watching streamers play and interact with their fan base.*
Matcherino was founded by a team of avid gamers led by CEO Grant Farwell and CTO Mario Gutierrez. “eSports is growing faster than any other sport in history. It took Football roughly 50 years to build out its infrastructure and eSports is poised to accomplish that in a fraction of the time,” said Farwell. “We are excited to work with fans, streamers and brands to create the leading platform for building and managing engaged eSports communities.” The company participated in the most recent TechStars Seattle class and with the current funding has raised $1.4 million.
Matcherino is well-positioned to play a key role in the $3.8 billion video game content market. This new platform helps connect players, fans, brands and streaming platforms such as Twitch or YouTube Gaming.
“eSports is an incredibly dynamic market that has already surpassed the viewership of popular cable channels and is continuing to grow as more gamers and fans join the community,” said Daniel Li, Madrona Venture Group. “It is clear that we are at the genesis of a new medium characterized by live, interactive, user-generated content. This can be complex to manage and Matcherino is building the tools and platform that will simplify eSports streamers’ lives and bring their fans closer to the action. We are looking forward to working with Grant and his team as they continue to drive innovation in this new entertainment medium.”
Matcherino’s first product has been live for several months and enables fans to crowdfund matches between their favorite streamers. Fans love seeing their favorite professional players battle against each other, and Matcherino enables fans to crowdfund any match they’d like to see. It’s up to the players to decide which ‘Showmatches’ they’d like to compete in. Since launching, fans have raised prize pools nearing $1,000, with some spending hundreds of dollars on a single match. Matcherino will soon be adding more products to help both established and up-and-coming streamers manage and grow their audience through the platform.
About Matcherino
Matcherino is an eSports engagement platform based in Seattle. Founded by avid gamers, the company has raised a total of $1.4 million.
About Madrona Venture Group
Madrona (www.madrona.com) has been investing in early-stage technology companies primarily in the Pacific Northwest since 1995. The firm manages nearly $1.3 billion and invests predominantly in seed and Series A rounds across the information technology spectrum, including consumer Internet, SaaS, digital media and advertising, cloud computing, data analytics, and mobile.
*Industry data from games analyst firm, NewZoo.