Swift, the US-based owner of eSports team Team SoloMid (TSM), has raised $37m in a series A round featuring telecommunications company Telstra, Forbes has reported.
Venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, which included AME Cloud Ventures, Yifang Ventures and a mixture of professional sportsmen and tech executives such as Stephen Curry, Steve Simon, Andre Iguodala, Steve Young, Colin Carrier and Walter Wang.
Swift runs TSM, which maintains specialist sub-teams for a range of games including League of Legends, Fortnite and Super Smash Brothers, as well as overseeing an influencer content offering and gaming analytics services and assistance tools.
The investment reflects the growing strength of a segment of entertainment where prize pools for individual contests with as little as eight competing teams can run into millions of dollars.
The company intends to put about $10m of the series A funds into strategic investments and acquisitions, and $20m into franchising costs and the development of a purpose-built eSports facility that will be used for training and a multimedia studio as Swift looks to build the TSM brand.
Andy Dinh, Swift’s founder and CEO, told Forbes: “TSM has always run a very lean operation, so we have not set ourselves up to take advantage of the fast growth that this market is experiencing, so that is what we are trying to prepare ourselves to do.
“We have got a really good group of investors … it is going to help us accomplish what we want for TSM.”