The parent company of esports organisation Team SoloMid, Swift, has reportedly raised $37m (£28.17m) in Series A funding according to Forbes. Bessemer Venture Partners led the investment which included the likes of Golden State Warriors player Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala, NFL player Steve Young and Yahoo Co-Founder Jerry Yang.
Team SoloMid Founder and CEO Andy Dinh told Forbes: “TSM has always run a very lean operation, so we haven’t set ourselves up to take advantage of the fast growth that this market is experiencing, so that’s what we’re trying to prepare ourselves to do. We’ve got a really good group of investors. it’s going to help us accomplish what we want for TSM.”
Bessemer seemingly spent a year looking at the esports space before it came up with the decision to invest in Swift and Team SoloMid.
Bessemer’s Lead Investor Ethan Kurzweil said: “It was just really clear Andy was operating at the highest level. What he had done without any capital at all was two or three times as much as people who had raised a lot of money.”
While the investment will cover Swift’s other businesses, including content networks, $10m (£7.6m) will be used for further investment into the gaming space while $20m (£15.2m) will be used for franchising fees, such as required in the LCS, and a new 15,000 – 20,000 square foot esports facility for TSM in Los Angeles, California. The facility will function as training headquarters for TSM’s teams and a studio for its multimedia content.
TSM has been in esports for quite some time now with teams in League of Legends’ North American LCS, Fortnite, PUBG and H1Z1. Thanks to its rapid growth TSM has also been able to lock down sponsors from the likes of Geico, Gillette, Dr. Pepper and Chipotle.
Esports Insider says: A dedicated esports facility is becoming more and more necessary for top-tier organisations like TSM. This is definitely a welcome investment coming in for the TSM family. As one of the first organisations to sign a Fortnite team TSM has seemingly been ahead of the curve and this massive investment will certainly take them above and beyond.