Esports was supposed to be the big story of 2020. Cannabis was in the toilet, blockchain was locked down, and mining and resources have been in cryosleep since the dinosaurs they’re looking to dredge up walked the earth. We were all waiting for the craze that swept large swaths of Asia and smaller swaths of Europe to make its way over here, and then we’d all cash in on mass production of esports related auxiliaries. Then we waited some more. We’re still waiting.
In the interim, there are companies still trying to make this work. We wrote about a plucky esports company looking to make a Rocky II style comeback after getting the crap kicked out of it in 2018. They’re still out there doing what they need to grow, but what’s the old cliche? What if we threw a party and nobody came. Yeah. That applies.
Still, Torque Esports (GAME.V), formerly Millennial Esports, has finally closed their long awaited three-way acquisition of Frankly and WinView, to create a platform dedicated to live esports, news and gaming.
The combined company will be called Engine Media Holdings.
The name of the company is born out of a cute little acronym, which is probably the most exciting thing about this deal in 2020: Esports, News Gaming, Interactive Network, Engagement. These three companies have been talking about doing this merger for months now, but like long-term couples with cold feet, always pushed off the date at the last minute.
Engine will be devoted to pulling in revenue for sports, esports, and news content with a set of businesses covering the esports sector, gaming related to live sports events, content management and stremaing services. There will also be options for data-driven advertising and intellectual property as they push out smartphone cash and skill games. The three companies combine their technologies with the intent to capitalize on what they feel is a growing, popular market for skills-based competition across a wide variety of games
What do the other esports companies do?
Frankly is a tech company offering management, publishing and monetization of digital content for any device. They offer an online video platform for live, video-on-demand and live-to-VOD workflows, and a full-featured content management system with storytelling capabilities, and native apps for iOS, Android, Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku.
WinView is a Silicon Valley-based company that holds a patent for second-screen interactive TV, which was exciting sometime back in 2017. Now it seems all WinView is good for is losing money.
Here’s a summary of WinView’s unaudited financial results for the year ended Dec. 31, 2018.
- Total revenue: $610,000 (U.S.)
- Direct costs: $1,066,000 (U.S.)
- Operating (loss): ($13,149,000) (U.S.)
- Total assets: $2,282,000 (U.S.)
- Total liabilities: $15,741,000 (U.S.)
They have a downloadable app you can get for iOS or Android, or mobile play on the Chrome browser. The paid contests range from $2 to $100 for entry fees, and users can compete against sports fans in contents ranging from 6-25 players. Their free contests offer small prize pools and are legal in all 50 states.
—Joseph Morton
