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Esports Audience Monetization Platform Raises $1.8 Million Seed Round

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There is an abundance of esports competitions and now companies that are trying to figure out how to properly exploit the growing audience (Photo: MEHDI FEDOUACH/AFP/Getty Images)

As of July 2017, there is little doubt in the staying power of esports, which is essentially an industry consisting of competitive video game play that has attracted not only participants, but also a wide range of spectators on platforms such as Twitch. However, one of the biggest challenges remains finding out successful methods to monetize the rapidly expanding industry.

Enter FanAI Inc., an artificial intelligence (AI) driven audience monetization platform that is initially focused on exploiting the esports landscape by collecting fan data owned by the rights holders and data available on various social and streaming platforms, as well as data repository services and payment data, and enriching it to build brand-specific personas and achetypes to predict behavior.

There is clear interest in the startup. FanAI will soon announce that it has closed a Series Seed round, led by Courtside Ventures, for a total of $1.8 million.

“Brands, especially non-endemics, are one of the largest potential revenue drivers for esports, but they have played a very minor role to this point,” says Deepen Parikh of Courtside Ventures. “We believe FanAI can spark that shift and drive significant money into the industry. We have a great syndicate of investors coming in on the round.”

The round includes Greycroft GC Tracker Fund, a new augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and esports fund, BDS Capital, CRCM Ventures, Sterling.VC, Loot Ventures (Manny Anekal, Dan Porter), Expansion VC, QB1 Ventures, Rosecliff Ventures, Catalyst Sports, Jason Robins (founder of DraftKings), Jordan Rambis (former VP Business Development at aXiomatic) and Everblue Management.

These investors are observing studies like one from The Next Level, which states that non-endemic brands are looking to increase their esports investment and that the industry is on pace to double 2016’s total. FanAI specifically seeks to drive that type of revenue opportunity from non-endemic brands through exploring and delivering information related to the preferences of the esports audience. Thus far, FanAI has already partnered with MastercardMA -0.53%, a non-endemic brand, to provide proprietary information to the company as it seeks to make determinations on smart investments.

“The caliber of investors in our Series Seed round, along with our recent work with DreamHack, all point toward the growing need for rights holders and sponsors to analyze esports with in-depth analytics,” says FanAI founder and CEO Johannes Waldstein. “FanAI provides a deep understanding of each fan. We help agencies and brands deliver personalized experiences and offers to each fan, while at the same time allowing sponsors to properly invest their sponsorship and media dollars into esports with confidence achieving their goals and measuring ROI.”

Darren Heitner the Founder of South Florida-based HEITNER LEGAL, P.L.L.C. and Sports Agent Blog. He authored the book, How to Play the Game: What Every Sports Attorney Needs to Know.