News

Skillz raises funding from NFL's 32 Equity investment arm

Former Airbnb chief financial officer Laurence Tosi has also been appointed to the board of directors

Date Type Companies involved Size
November 21st, 2019 investment Skillz Not disclosed
Skillz raises funding from NFL's 32 Equity investment arm

The NFL’s strategic investment arm 32 Equity has invested in competitive mobile games platform Skillz.

Existing investors in the company include Wildcat Capital, Liberty Global and Telstra Venture.

The firm also took the opportunity to announce that former Airbnb and Blackstone chief financial officer Laurence Tosi has been appointed to the board of directors.

Doubled player base

“Last year we nearly doubled our player base,” said co-founder and CEO Andrew Paradise.

“With backers like the NFL’s 32 Equity, we are aligning with powerful brands that can continue to advance our distribution and reach.”

32 Equity vice president Kevin LaForce added: “There are over 2.6 billion mobile gamers worldwide and Skillz is the largest mobile platform connecting players in competitive gameplay.”

“We invested in Skillz because we believe the platform is driving the future of mobile entertainment, which is an area the NFL believes is critical to engage our fans in an increasingly connected world.”

Skillz platform has over 30 million players, with the company hosting over four million tournament entries a day and distributing $60 million in prizes each month.

In a recent interview, Paradise commented: "Given our growth rate, an IPO is logical [in late 2019].”

This activity underlines that premise, although Paradise also added “I’m not saying we are going to IPO then, just that we’ll be IPO-ready.”

 

Deputy Editor

Matthew Forde is the deputy editor at PocketGamer.biz and also a member of the Pocket Gamer Podcast. You can find him on Twitter @MattForde64 talking about stats, data and everything pop culture related - particularly superheroes.