#playerslounge

By: Brian Zwerner

There is a new wave of startups looking to have people play video games against other players for cash. This can be single head-to-head games for $1 or even $100, or this can be larger tournaments with hundreds of players for prize pools of $1,000 or higher.  So, who is ready to face me in Madden for some real money?  Actually, forget that.  The only football video game I would have a shot of winning would be Tecmo Bowl on an old Nintendo console.

Let’s dig in on this new phenomenon in gaming.  The market for video games for cash is still emerging.  Generally, video gaming for cash is considered a game of skill, so it does not require a gambling license.  Since you can only wager on your own outcome and not other people’s performance, this type of gaming is legal in about 40 states.  One of the important features of video gaming for money is making sure that the player matchups feature two people of similar skill and experience. This is a tricky proposition, since more experienced players try to mask their identity to prey on weaker opponents.  It’s like the newbie sitting at a poker table in Vegas with a World Series of Poker champion. The platforms work to try and stop this, but it is impossible to get it right every time.

The biggest player by far in video gaming for cash is Skillz. Skillz offers simple mobile phone games for cash. You can play a blackjack style game or solitaire for cash against another player. Most of the games are fast, typically 1-2 minutes, and the usual price per game is $1-5.  Skillz went public in December 2020 in a merger with a SPAC, and the stock now trades under the ticker SKLZ.  The stock had a quick runup in price, but it peaked in February 2021.  Their stock now trades right around their IPO price with a market cap of just over $7 Billion.  

From a recent Skillz investor presentation, the company did $1.6 Billion in tournament prize pools last year on 2 Billion played events, and their take was $230MM in revenue from this. The company typically takes a 10% rake from the winner on each game. This is a big market with a ton of cash sloshing around.  There are a few other competitors in the mobile games for cash space. So far Skillz has stuck with simple mobile casual games, but they could certainly expand in the future.  At this time, none of the sports betting or iGaming companies have moved into this space, but they are certainly potential entrants too.

In the console gaming for money space, the early leader appears to be Players Lounge.  The company offers head-to-head and tournament play on most sports games (Madden, FIFA, NBA2K, The Show) and also a few popular battle games (Call of Duty and Fortnite).  The company launched in 2015, and they have raised from a strong list of investors including Courtside Ventures, Comcast, Drake, Marissa Mayer, and Y Combinator. There are a number of other competitors in this space.  PLAYY has raised over $4 Million in funding from NBA All Star Bradley Beal and others for their offering around a similar list of console games.  GamerSaloon is another serious entrant in the category. They focus on tournaments in the console space and have achieved meaningful traction.  As an active venture investor in the gaming space, I have seen at least a half dozen others trying to break into the market.  

Best I can tell, the bigger players are each doing 100K or more games per year.  Add it up, figure at least 500K total console games for money were played last year, a significant number but nowhere near the 2 Billion games that Skillz has hosted.  This is a space that deserves some attention as the upside is huge.  It will be interesting to see if Skillz uses some of their stock currency to buy one of the existing leaders or eventually creates their own offering.  More interesting would be DraftKings, FanDuel, or another sportsbook operator. It seems likely that the crossover in customers would be even higher with the sportsbooks and console gamers. Keep an eye on this space in the coming years.

See prior Consumer Gems posts here