Portuguese esports startup Replai has secured an investment of $1.3 million (£1.05 million) in its seed funding round.
The funding was led by Bright Pixel with contribution from Ideias Glaciares and Clever Advertising.
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Replai uses artificial intelligence to “create short-videos in real time and increase the value of esports’ audiences.” The company is aiming to expand internationally into both the United Kingdom and United States “given the importance that esports have in these particular geographies.”
João Costa and Francisco Pacheco, Founders of Replai, spoke on the investment in a release: “Forecasts show that esports will soon beat traditional sports. However, monetization is still far behind other fields such as mobile gaming – which is expected to top $100b in revenue by 2020, for example. So, our mission is to help esports companies profit from this paradigm shift. This round allowed us, above all, to gather a panel of experts in gaming and technology that will help us take the next step growth-wise as soon as possible.”
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Replai automatically collates highlights from competitions that are live streamed, creating custom-made clips for social media to “maximize audiences and generate revenue for sponsors and advertisers.”
Benjamin Júnior, Co-founder of Bright Pixel, added: “Replai stands out for their AI technology which enables automatic creation and distribution of short videos, this being a transversal need to any area that uses video as a communication method. Besides the innovative solution, Replai is founded by two young entrepreneurs with a proved record of user acquisition, strong technical know-how and the ambition to grow the business globally. This combination of factors was decisive and provides us confidence in consolidating Replai’s success.”
Esports Insider says: It’s clear that there’s interest in Replai’s offering and the premise of increasing value for sponsors is definitely needed in an industry where monetisation is often bleak.
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