Highlights:
- The investors include Alinea Capital, Bumble Ventures, Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder, Agileo Ventures and NFL player JuJu Smith Schuster.
- The fund thus raised will help companies expand their data platform in the US.
Introduction:
The backers include Alinea Capital, Bumble Ventures, Tar Heel Capital Pathfinder, Agileo Ventures and NFL player JuJu Smith Schuster. The money will help the Berlin based company grow its data platform and expand its footprint in the US. Previously the company raised $1.6 million and right now it’s successfully raised $11.6 million to date.
CEO Mauritz Mauer head founded the company three years ago to help collect better data about competitive gameplay such as esports. The data is pertinent to the game developers but it can also be useful for people who want to bet on esports matches. This is something which has become a huge business worldwide.
The data can run predictive models which can calculate and predict the winner of the matches. But it has other uses too. Frequently players starve for more data than companies typically share. The data can also help players become better at competitive gameplay. But companies often keep the data to themselves and don’t realise that the data can work with the monetization.
Statement from the CEO of the company:
“My career has been about esports, data, and betting,” Maurer said. “We started providing live data for esports betting.” His previous company was GG Wins which he sold it eventually to Genius Sports. Maurer said that over the period of the last decade in both sports and esports, he and his team developed technical capabilities. These capabilities can help tournament organizers and game publishers unlock the engagement and monitise action potential for their official in-game data.
For Grid Esports, things were a little different from the sports data business. “I saw that the sports data companies are not well equipped to deal with esports data challenges at all,” Maurer said. “It’s an ever-evolving space, and so you can’t have a static data framework. On top of that, the data has been collected manually. That puts a limit on the accuracy and the speed at which the data can be obtained.”
Tournament organisers can access Grid’s data to determine the official player data which can help companies monetize from it. Others can use the information to bet on the games. The comprehensive data works to generate predictive models that specify who will win the match. It can also yield information which is useful for the commentators as they watch live matches.
How the CEO views the data:
He views the data as an asset, and he says that it can be a critical path of traditional sports business. Emulation of similar dynamics that overcome esports and gaming specific data challenges provide the potential to create immense value and sustained growth for the ecosystem. The company figured out how it can automatically collect and manage data for esports tournaments on a huge scale.
“We only touch official data, and leverage it for companies,” Maurer said.
Maurer says that 2020 provided a massive growth here as far as the gaming and esports industry is concerned. The benefits were also extended to Grid. The company launched its data platform in 2018 during the Face It London Counter Strike: Global Offensive major tournament.
It quickly expanded to secure partnerships from other major tournament organisers like Flashpoint and WePlay. Within three years time the company’s Dec infrastructure started to support major esports titles and received integration from a significant majority of top-tier tournament organisers.
