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- The British investment firm Hiro Capital announced the launch of a €100M EUR ($110M USD) VC fund to back games, esports, and digital sports companies in the EU and UK.
- The fund is looking to accelerate the growth of approximately 20 companies through Series A and B financings and entrepreneurial mentoring.
- Former ESL and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment executive Spike Laurie was appointed as the fund’s esports venture director.
Today, Hiro Capital announced that it has launched a €100M ($110M) venture capital (VC) fund to back innovators in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) games, esports, and digital sports ecosystem.
According to Hiro Capital, it will use the funds to accelerate the growth of about 20 companies. The fund will generally invest at the post-seed stage, at Series A and B. As well as financial investments, Hiro Capital plans to mentor its portfolio companies to help them scale.
“Fifteen years ago, the video games sector was niche, esports was underground, and digital sports tracking was only available to elite athletes,” said Luke Alvarez, managing partner of Hiro Capital in a release. “Now, there are three billion gamers globally, 600 million game stream fans, and over 500 million sports monitoring smartwatches and trackers. Games, esports, and digital sports are becoming a fundamental ecosystem for entertainment, economic, and social life in the mid-21st century. Hiro invests in the innovators who are building that future – they are our heroes.”
The fund is led by an entrepreneurial founding team consisting of ten industry veterans including Luke Alvarez (managing partner), a former co-founding CEO & President of Inspired Entertainment, a Nasdaq-listed mobile games and virtual sports technology company as well as a co-founding non-executive of The Cloud Network; Ian Livingstone (partner), a co-founder of Games Workshop and former chairman of Eidos, the publisher of Tomb Raider; Cherry Freeman (partner); Simon Cornwell (non-exec investment director); Thomas Martens (DACH & sports venture director); and Alistair Hopkins (technology venture director).
Spike Laurie, a former executive at ESL and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment, was appointed as the fund’s esports venture director. Laurie is an esports veteran with experience building esports production and infrastructure across three continents and driving multi-million dollar esports revenue pipelines.
