Good morning,
High school e-sports squads are now nearly as common as tennis teams--thanks, in large part, to a 3-year-old gaming startup.
In 2018, Los Angeles-based PlayVS signed a deal with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the organization that sanctions American high school sports, to become the sport’s official software infrastructure provider. PlayVS hosts and streams matches, makes schedules, and compiles statistics--and on Friday, PlayVS founder and CEO Delane Parnell revealed exclusively to Inc. that more than 8,600 high schools have created e-sports teams on the startup’s platform.
That amounts to 43 percent of the 20,000 NFHS-sanctioned high schools in the country. By way of comparison, about 14,000 high schools offer football. PlayVS also hosts teams from more than 1,200 colleges and university, about a quarter of those in the country, according to Parnell. And it’s playing with big money: The company has $106 million in funding from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Science, and Elysian Park Ventures, the investing arm of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Despite the rapid growth, PlayVS still has a long way to go--in an industry that one sports management professor describes as having “unlimited” opportunity. Read our story to learn how the startup is turning high school e-sports into a national phenomenon, and where it’s aiming to go next. |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment