The South African gaming scene has gained popularity and attention from international investments as well as the world’s top tech investors thanks to a local eSport platform.
The South African gaming startup, Gaming Battle Ground (GBG) pitched to investors at the EIG Expo Startup Launch Pad which took place from 18-20 October in Berlin, Germany. GBG made it to the top five, beating hundreds other hopefuls, it was the only South African startup to come this far.
eSports is estimated to be a billion dollor industry and fast becoming one of the biggest sports in the world and one of the hottest new tech investment focus areas. GBG is laveraving on this opportunity, the platform allows gamers and brands to organise their own tournaments, presented its business model to a panel of top industry experts and investors at the expo.
Led by panel chair Melissa Blau, Director of iGaming Capital, the judging panel of the competition consisted of Jon Bradford, the ex-MD of Techstars, Mark Blandford of Burlywood Capital, Evan Hoff of Velo Partners, Carla Maree Vella, CEO of Optimizer Invest, Chris North of GamCrowd and Ewa Bakun of Clarion Events. Hoff was particularly impressed with the startup and told the audience that GBG was a great investment.
“That GBG was even invited to the EIG Expo’s Startup launchpad is a significant achievement and validation. It tells the global community that the South African gaming and eSports industries are highly innovative, competitive and investment-worthy. Gaming is big business and is supported by an estimated 1.7 billion gamers worldwide. And the exciting thing is that South African gaming startups are now amongst the most noteworthy new entrants into this market,” said local gaming expert Gareth Woods, a professional Dota2 commentator and gaming expert.
In South Africa and globally more than 70% of the gaming market are millenials between the ages of 18 and 30, who spend a large portion of their disposable income on bandwidth, hardware, software and internet-enabled devices. eSports has grown so significantly in popularity, its tournaments now fill entire football stadia, its top stars earn up to US$20m in prize money for major tournaments, and its most popular live-streaming platform Twitch now outperforms YouTube. In the US, it is now the second most popular sport after NFL football, and globally the eSports audience has tripled in size between 2013 and 2016, from 71.5m to 226m people. Woods shared these figures at the inaugural eSports Branding Summit in Johannesburg last week.
Woods commented that GBG was well-positioned to capitalise on the growth of this industry because it was giving local gamers unprecedented power to arrange their own professional tournaments, earning not only entry fees for the organisers but prize money for competitors. “Previously big tournaments were arranged by big corporates, but now, the tournament scene is for gamers by gamers. That’s a significant incentive for local players to build up and professionalise the industry – and ultimately this shift in the industry will help to legitimise eSports in South Africa and to make our local industry more globally competitive,” said Woods.
The GBG platform allows players to earn rewards through competing in eight games including Starcraft 2, DOTA 2, League of Legends and CS:GO. Players pick their own dates and games to set tournaments in motion.
Not new to the competition space, GBG was the winning startup in a recent Croatian gaming startup accelerator programme, and its online platform www.https://www.gamingbattleground.co.za/ has been lauded by local gaming experts such as Woods, Masters Series Champion Travis Waters, professional CS:GO player Trevor Morley and others.
Changing the game
GBG is the first platform of its kind – sporting its very own messaging platform, crypto-currency and national leaderboards – to empower the local gaming community to bring more amateur gamers into the professional leagues and ultimately help legitimise the growing eSports market in SA.
“We’re very proud of the platform and how well it performed at EIG. It’s an important affirmation that we are on the right track and offering the market something it needs. We are very excited about the future of competitive eSports in SA and we hope that platforms like GBG will take the local scene to the next level,” South African founder Greg Hamilton Stevens said from Germany.
The tech entrepreneur and avid gamer spent more than a decade working in the gaming startup scene in the US including Silicon Valley and recently returned to SA to focus on GBG after spending the past two years developing the platform with his Croatian business partner and a team of developers.
Original source ITnewsafrica
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire