18 September, 2020 | By Anzu
Console pre-orders, significant investments, and prominent partnerships — the resume of the events that mark this week in the world of esports and video gaming, and you can’t afford to miss on! Read further to get all the details in our weekly news digest.
Multiplayer gaming social app Bunch has closed $20 million in Series A funding to continue to grow its user base and platform. The round was led by General Catalyst, and included major gaming companies such as Electronic Arts, Krafton, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Supercell, Riot Games, Miniclip, Mixi, and Colopl. General Catalyst's Niko Bonatsos will also join the board of directors at Bunch. It’s worth highlighting that since March, Buch has already seen its platform grow over 50 times in monthly active users. GamesIndustry.biz cites Bunch CEO Selçuk Atlı saying the reason behind that lies in the fact that "multiplayer games are the new social networks. And in these trying times where we are isolated from each other, games are how people are choosing to spend time with friends."
And...to some more investment news! Bayes has raised $6 million from Pohlad Family investment group, Fertitta Capital, and the Sony Innovation Fund. Despite the fact that Jens Hilgers, the co-founder and managing director of Bayes, is also the head of Bitkraft Ventures, the latter is not among the investors of Bayes to avoid conflicts of interests. With companies like this one, esports has another way to generate both meaning from tournament data and a way to monetize that data through competitive passion, betting on matches, and fantasy esports, claims VentureBeat. The company will use the money to expand the data and content offering on its platform as well as the development of new platform features to the benefit of data owners and buyers. As a reminder — in 2019, Bayes cemented some significant partnerships, including deals with ESL and Riot Games.
English Premier League club Manchester City FC has renewed and extended its partnership with South Korean tire company Nexen Tire. The new partnership extends the logo placement to be featured on all sides of kits associated with the club, including Manchester City Esports’ FIFA players’ jerseys. Previously, Manchester City FC also signed a partnership with FaZe Clan to collaborate on content and events, share a training facility, and launch co-branded retail products, but some of the efforts between the two organizations’ FIFA teams were stymied by the COVID-19 pandemic, reports the Esports Observer.
Germany FIFA esports organisation FOKUS CLAN has announced Adidas as a supplier for its jerseys and teamwear. This complements the existing partnership FOKUS CLAN has with OUTFITTER that will continue to be responsible for the individualisation and refinement of the teamwear in the upcoming season. The partnership between the German entities was initiated and brokered by sports marketing agency Infront, mentions Esports Insider.
Microsoft will open pre-orders for its next-generation consoles on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 11 am EDT. Hopefully it goes smoother than Sony’s pre-order plans that resulted in a chaotic frenzy with websites crashed, and consoles quickly sold out. Microsoft may be throwing a little shade at its competitor tweeting “don’t worry — we’ll let you know the exact time pre-orders start for you soon,” but they might also be very well trying to avoid a similar situation, giving people time to plan their buys. Polygon seems to know everything about it.
Anzu.io is an in-game advertising platform that brings real-world brand ads to video gaming and esports. Backed by BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, WPP, and Axel Springer Digital Ventures, Anzu redefines digital advertising through seamless integration of non-intrusive ads into the gameplay. Bringing real-time data and programmatic to the video gaming world, the platform promises native advertising, brand safety and ad viewability. Follow Anzu on
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