Tag Archives: Unikrn

The Betmarkets agenda boasted an impressive collection of speakers dissecting esports across three separate talks at ICE on Wednesday morning. Unikrn Founder Rahul Sood skyped from Seattle, whilst Newzoo’s Peter Warman, Fnatic CEO Wouter Sleijffers and other notable figures discussed the growing industry at length with a focus on how it is vastly dissimilar to traditional sports, and the importance of appreciating this …

Mark Cuban has invested in daily fantasy sports start-up Fantasy Labs inc. The company was founded in 2015 by Peter Jennings and Jonathan Bales. They are both professional DFS players and DraftKings analysts. Jennings was the winner of DraftKings first $1 million (£703,000) tournament, whilst Bales has won hundreds of thousands in DFS winnings. Bales said of Cuban’s investment: “Mr. Cuban’s …

Deloitte has released its technology media telecommunications (TMT) forecast for 2016, and it makes for some interesting reading in regard to eSports.  It is estimated that as an industry it will grow by 25% and create global revenues of $500m (£346.8m) in 2016. This is up $100m (£69.4m) from last year. Deloitte’s predictions fall some way short of some of last year’s …

Following Part 1’s assessment of the key occurrences in the eSports industry from a business perspective in the opening six months of 2015, here’s more of the same for the latter part of the year. August Ashton Kutcher became the latest high profile investor in eSports as he joined billionaire Mark Cuban in investing in Unikrn. Kutcher has a successful …

In an interview with Fortune Mark Cuban, US businessman and investor, stated his belief that the USA will legalise sports betting. When quizzed on the recent, and ongoing, investigations into the legality of daily fantasy sports firms such as FanDuel and DraftKings, Cuban said that he believes it is “inevitable” that gambling will be legalised. He added: “It will take …

2015 looked set to be a big year for eSports, but on many accounts it ended up being somewhat larger than many anticipated. Viewer numbers increased, both live and online, with 36 million tuning into the League of Legends World Championship final whilst tournament prize pools also grew. The prize pool for the International Dota 2 tournament this year was $18m …

Team Unikrn are the world’s first, full time professional all female eSports team. Comprised of players from across Europe, they are Melania ‘Gina’ Mylioti from Greece, Julia ‘Julie’ Strunkowski of Germany, Perrine ‘Lalità’ Allesiardo and Sophia ‘Kim’ Benfakir of France, and the UK’s Camilla “Parmaviolet”. Backers are Rahul Sood’s eSports and entertainment company, Unikrn, and wagering operator Luxbet. The handpicked …

Competitive eSports platform Unikrn has partnered with multi-player gaming league FACEIT, to create the world’s first competitive integrity certification program for eSports. The program aims to establish industry-wide best practice combined with competitive structures and policies to ensure legitimacy in eSports match results. FACEIT becomes the first league to implement the certification program to its multi-player games. Unikrn governance further …

SBC gains first hand insight on the current legal conditions and context of eSports by Bryce Blum, Director of eSports at Unikrn. A lawyer and avid gamer Blum is at the centre of operations for Unikrn, a competitive platform aiming to take lead in the burgeoning eSports market, leading the operators business development and legal initiatives. Bryce further maintains a full-time …

Hollywood film star and technology evangelist Ashton Kutcher has joined competitive eSports wagering platform Unikrn’s Series A investment round via venture capital firm Sound Ventures (https://www.crunchbase.com). Kutcher, who recently played technology pioneer Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple) in the film “Jobs”, has a solid investment track record having invested in popular enterprises such as SoundCloud, Airbnb, Uber and FourSquare. Kutcher …