MUMBAI: Swift, the parent company of North American eSports organization Team SoloMid (TSM), has announced the close of a $37 million series A funding round.
First reported in Forbes, the funding was led by Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer Venture Partners, which also backs Blue Apron and Pinterest, and was previously an investor in Twitch.
Along with Bessemer, two of the most prominent investors in the round are Yahoo! Inc. co-founder Jerry Yang and NBA superstar Stephen Curry, Forbes reports. Other investors include:
Telstra, Australian telecommunications company
Steve Simon, co-founder of Simon Equity Partners and a board member of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers
Andre Iguodala, NBA player and teammate of Curry’s on the Golden State Warriors
Steve Young, Hall of Fame NFL player
Yifang Ventures, Chinese venture capital fund
Colin Carrier, chief strategy officer at Twitch
Walter Wang, CEO of JM Eagle
The company will reportedly use $10 million of the funding for acquisitions and investments in the gaming industry. A further $20 million will be used to pay franchising fees for entry into the North America League of Legends Championship Series (entry fee $10 million) and to build a 15-20,000 square foot eSports facility in Los Angeles.
“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,” Andy Dinh, CEO of TSM, told Forbes. “We’ve got a really good group of investors… it’s going to help us accomplish what we want for TSM.”
This latest investment further expands Bessemer’s presence in eSports and gaming. Kurzweil’s other portfolio companies include popular streaming site Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon, Inc. in 2016. Bessemer increased its presence in eSports in the second half of 2017 when it hired John Robinson, an experienced eSports entrepreneur. It has ties with both TSM and fellow NA LCS participant 100 Thieves, where Robinson serves as President and COO.
“It was just really clear Andy was operating at the highest level,” Kurzweil said. “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.”
With the huge influx of cash, TSM is primed to extend its dominance in North American eSports. Since Dinh founded the company in 2009, it has become one of the region’s best-known brands with presence in League of Legends, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Fortnite, among other titles.
