In a new kind of collaboration, Drake joined some of Silicon Valley’s biggest VCs and angel investors—including Strauss Zelnick and Marissa Mayer—in raising a total of $3 million for Players’ Lounge, the eSports betting startup announced in a Medium post Thursday.
“Players’ Lounge is a platform where gamers can play their favorite video games against others for prizes,” wrote CEO Austin Woolridge, who founded the company with his IRL (rather than virtual) college soccer teammate Zach Dixon in fall 2014.
Today, the company says it hosts 350 million players over the age of 18 who earn millions of dollars every month.
“It’s crazy to think this all started because it was tough to fit more than five people in a New York City apartment,” Woolridge said.
We're building something big. https://t.co/iMTTdDvfP0
— Austin | Players’ Lounge (@wooldynasty) March 28, 2019
Comcast, Macro Ventures, Canaan, RRE, Chetrit Ventures, and Courtside also invested in the eSports startup’s funding round—eager to contribute to a market sector that is expected to earn $1 billion globally this year.
“In 2019 we plan on expanding our development team, supporting more games, adding streaming functionality and creating new formats for our community to compete in,” Woolridge wrote on Medium.
News of the funding comes a month after Super League Gaming became the first eSports company to go public.