As many of you may know, esports are BIG. I myself have been following the scene for a while now and over the past three years I’ve seen esports grow into a competitor to regular sports. But I’m not here to convince you of esports. Instead, I will explain how the esports start-up ecosystem is developing, giving you a general overlook of the scene.

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Being BIG doesn’t mean that esports are mature. Today, most of the growth in esports is created through startups. And from the outside world, that might be hard to understand.

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To simplify, I think every ecosystem that has risen in the past and that will grow in the future, consists of a first wave of start-ups. Arguably, esports are riding this wave right now, meaning the ecosystem is for sure not yet mature. Just to clarify, I don’t consider Twitch to be an esports startup, since only about 15% of viewers go there for esports.

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1. Current situation for esports: B2C

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Today most of the emerging startups are B2C-oriented. It’s quite obvious, most of the founders want to solve a problem they face daily:

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• Where can I find esports games schedule? → AbiosGaming
• How can I bet on esports competitions? → Unikrn.co
• How can I improve my skills as a gamer? → LoLSumo

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There are different categories of B2C companies so I will shortly analyse the different types.

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Betting sites are one of the most noisy part of the wave. They are sometimes legally-speaking, borderline, but also often very popular. In the U.S the most impressive examples are the fantasy websites Vulcun and AlphaDraft. The former has raised $15M in 2 rounds from noteworthy funds such as Sequoia Capital. The latter has come through the Amplify L.A. program, after which they raised $5M, after which they got acquired by FanDuel. The popularity of these two fantasy websites doesn’t need to be proved. I myself, have lost a few bucks on both of them…

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The other go-to-example is obviously Unikrn.com, founded by Rahul Sood (founder of VoodooPC and GM of Microsoft Ventures). They raised $10 with a very interesting move from Mark Cuban.

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Another aspect of betting comes from websites such as the french’s skill.gg. They call it ‘skill-based betting’ — it’s completely legal — and it basically lets you bet on your own win against other players.

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More examples: Pinnacle e-sport, jacta.gg, csgolounge.com, kickback.com, /r/csgobetting/, …

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Media and Scoring apps are also a well developed answer to a very basic pain; how to follow esports when you’re on the move. One of the best example is Instant eSports, who went through Y Combinator and have the mission of becoming the ESPN of esports. They have recently closed a $2M seed round. Another competitor on mobile is Strafe: which for now is quite confidential.

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Similarly, Abios is a website/web add-on to show the schedule of any esports competitions. The Swedish team managed to have a very clean product, which happens to be efficient too. In the same alley, FolloweSports presents themselves as the TV guide for esports, with a neat website and large amount of competitions.

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Streaming services. Everybody knows Twitch. If you look past that curtain of popularity and you will discover a whole range of startups with a different way of approaching the vast streaming market. For example, the LA based startup Mobcrush raised $16M to develop a mobile games streaming platform, slowly gaining traction with games such as Vainglory, Hearthstone and Minecraft Pocket. Even more, Kamcord raised close to $30M from some big game editors such as Wargaming and Tencent Holdings (majority shareholder of RiotGames), themselves having hundreds of live viewers.

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There are also a lot of twitch-like websites, fragmented over the different continents. For instance, there is douyu.tv in China and afreeca.tv in Korea.

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More examples: hitbox.tv, azubu.tv.

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Tournaments that anyone can join are an interesting trend in esports and there are hundreds of different organisers. There seems to be a strong split in organiser size: on the one hand there are big organisers such as ESL or MSI and on the other hand there are those organisers organising open tournaments, those that anyone can join. Another Amplify.LA start-up; BattleFy, targets this niche. They’ve raised $3.5M and are based in Vancouver. BattleFry is about creating and managing tournaments for the millions of players that aren’t professionals. Super League Gaming is another such organiser, organising tournaments in actual theatres. More examples are StriveWire and Glory4Gamers.

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More examples: StriveWire, Glory4Gamers, lots of local organizers…

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Another system that are gravitating to esports are social platforms. In my opinion, there is clearly something to discover in this field. Replace the old and dead GameSpy. The fast growing and disruptive ZenGaming is the first example in this class. They have the ambition of being the platform for esports: social network, tournaments hosts, matchmaking and more. Player.me tries to be more of the Linkedin for gamers, with a bigger accent on communicating. And finally an under-the-radar startup from Canada, GamerLink launched their beta for a smart matchmaking platform, where your gamer preferences can influence your mates in the game.

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One of the most obvious category is around self improvement. With hundreds of millions of gamers in the world, the cult for performance is clearly a thing. And the metrics support the hypothesis, when you look at the actions most League of Legends players make before their games:

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• Check the enemy teams profiles on op.gg, are you going to get steamrolled by Diamonds players?
• Go on Probuilds.net to see what pro players usually do with your character.
• Self congratulate yourself on LoLKing.net, on your personal statistics with this character.

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Out of those passive improvement websites, one stands out. LOLSumo is more of a personal, automated coach, on LoL. They base their advices on freely available statistics and are just starting. Nonetheless the future of this app seems very exciting, most certainly for the millions of average gamers.

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To conclude this long section on B2C esports startups, I have to talk about some awesome startups that can’t easily be placed under one label. Firstly, the start-up studio DOJO Madness — responsible for LOLSumo — also built Bruce.gg. It’s best way of getting highlights of your plays and tournaments, coupled with performance data analysis. With the growth of esports that we’ve seen, there are many webTV-based structures: based on the traditional TV model, but operating on Twitch and others streaming platforms. Probably the biggest such TVs come from France, of which my personal favorite is OGamingTV. They have a duo of casters with strong identities and spread their interests over various games. They have crazy audiences with peeks at 100k viewers — only in France. Kongdoo Company is another cool webTV, based in Korea, by ex pro players.

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More examples: MilleniumTV, MLGTV, …

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Finally, the startup I’m rooting for is Discord. It’s here to replace the old TeamSpeak and awful Skype. They mix the Slack UX with a voice chat, which makes it a must have for every gamers that want to play with friends online.

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2. Helping esports grow: B2B

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Most startups are B2C and I personally think that the future of esports lies with B2B. It depends on how the B2B market is able to sustain and create value for esports, next to closing the gap between esports and other sports. Again, don’t get me wrong here, there are already a fair amount of B2B esports startups, with really great projects.

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Esports host large viewing numbers and very active communities, hence brands and sponsors love e-sports. Coca-Cola made a strong move by sponsoring the LoL Champions Series and the LoL World Cups. Similar big sponsors were Adidas, Pringles, New Balance and more. This aspect of esports also quickly got embodied by new, small and innovative agencies (parallel to startups). A good example is GoodGames, bought by Twitch, which is half marketing agency, half professional team. Another such company is Waypoint Media, based in NYC, which help brands and agencies monitor what’s happening in esports. In the same vein we have BangBang Management, which also is a player agency. They are creating a bond between advertisers/brands and esports, a cornerstone of any professional sports ecosystem.

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More examples: hellogamers.com, matcherino.com

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Finally, I will talk about the core startups that answer fundamental needs in the e-sport ecosystem. Toornament is a french start-up that is the platform for tournament organisation: a SaaS for tournaments. You can manage your players, the brackets and have a lot of available integrations. With the growth of the ecosystem, the number of teams will also grow. All these teams need a website and having to pay a web agency is costly. Using some CMS is not cost-effective. Esportsify provides a solution: it allows you to deploy a website dedicated to your e-sport organisation, in minutes.

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Since I myself am a founder of an esports startup, I will talk very shortly of what we are doing. PandaScore is the data provider for esports. We have statistics on player performance, tournament audiences and more. We work with teams — to help them win games — but also with medias, bookmakers and any other creative data-oriented, e-sports startups.

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Enough PandaScore advertising… Since the esports startup ecosystem is expansive and there are many cool startups of which I’m sure I have missed some, do not hesitate to contact Flavien Guillocheau if you’d like me to include a project in the article. All feedback is very much appreciated!

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Flavien.