UK-based investment firm Hiro Capital has launched a €100 million (£87.6 million) fund for gaming, esports, and sports technology.
The fund has been founded to “accelerate the growth of about 20 UK and European Games and Sports innovators.”
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Luke Alvarez, Managing Partner of Hiro Capital discussed the reasoning for the fund: “Fifteen years ago, the video games sector was niche, esports was underground and digital sports tracking was only available to elite athletes. Now there are three billion gamers globally, 600 million game stream fans, and over 500 million sports monitoring smart watches and trackers. Today’s consumers play games, watch streams and post sports stats every day and rarely watch terrestrial TV.”
The founding team consists of Ian Livingstone CBE, Cherry Freeman, and Alvarez. It’ll typically invest in companies that are at the post-seed stage, contributing to Series A and B rounds. As well as gaming and esports, the fund will go towards “sector-specific applications of Cloud, Mobile, Streaming, Big Data, AI, Wearables, AR and VR technologies.”
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Other members of the team behind of the fund include Simon Cornwell, Spike Laurie, Thomas Martens, and Alistair Hopkins.
Freeman added: “There are very few sectors which are totally global, totally consumer facing and instantly scalable and our new fund will be looking to tap into this potential to discover the next-generation of trailblazers. The Hiro team have founded games, sports and tech startups worth over $5bn between us. We support our entrepreneurs on their heroic journeys from startups to global stars.”
Esports Insider says: It’s fair to say that this is a power move by Hiro Capital in the current esports climate, considering firms such as BITKRAFT are investing more and more in the industry as time goes on. The jury is out as to just how involved it’ll get in esports for now, however.