UPDATED 18:40 EDT / AUGUST 23 2017

EMERGING TECH

Sliver.tv raises $9.8M to let esports fans watch in VR

Sliver.tv, a video streaming startup that lets users watch live esports matches in virtual reality, has raised an additional $9.8 million in early-stage funding as it looks to expand its platform and add new games to its roster.

The Series A funding round was led by Danhua Capital, along with Heuristic Capital Partners and ZP Capital. Other participants included existing seed investors DCM, Sierra Ventures, The VR Fund, Samsung Next Fund and Sony Innovation Fund. The new funding brings Sliver.tv’s full Series A round, partially raised earlier, to $17.5 million, and its total funding to date is $36 million.

Founded in 2015 in Cupertino, California, Sliver.tv wants to give competitive video game fans something even better than a front row seat. Using virtual reality, Sliver.tv allows esports fans to watch matches from inside the games themselves.

“We’re on the cutting edge developing the next-generation live streaming technology,” said Mitch Liu, co-founder and chief executive of Sliver.tv. “This new funding will accelerate our R&D investments in machine vision, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.”

Sliver.tv has already forged partnerships with several of the biggest esports tournaments in the industry, including ESL One, DreamHack and Intel Extreme Masters. So far the platform has largely focused on “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” and “League of Legends,” which are two of the most popular games in esports. Liu did not say if Sliver.tv plans to add new games in the near future.

Dovey Wan, managing director of Danhua Capital, said that Sliver.tv is “fundamentally transforming the live spectator experience for global esports fans,” and he believes that the startup is set to disrupt the esports streaming industry.

While Liu says that viewership for esports in VR is growing, the startup has a long way to go before it catches up to established esports streaming platforms such as Twitch, which has access to the immense resources of its parent company, Amazon.com Inc.

Twitch is only one of Amazon’s many, many properties, but the ecommerce giant has shown that it is interested in investing even more into the service than the $970 million it spent to acquire Twitch in the first place. Last year, for example, Amazon launched Twitch Prime, which gives Prime subscribers access to a free Twitch channel subscription, in-game bonuses and more. Amazon also added native Twitch streaming support to its in-house game engine, Lumberyard, and Twitch benefits from the massive networking infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services.

Sliver.tv’s VR niche may be enough to allow it to compete with Twitch, unless of course Amazon decides to offer its own VR features.

Photo: IMG_0331 via photopin (license)

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