As Gaming Flourishes, Scopely Accelerates Growth with New Round of Funding
Gaming is growing. Even before COVID-19, the pastime, once largely perceived as the domain of young males, was escalating in popularity with an expanding roster of titles to accommodate gamers of all kinds. As the pandemic forces us to find more entertainment options at home, video games played on consoles, PCs, and smartphones are an easy default. Mobile gaming in particular is accelerating rapidly as our time spent on smartphones increases alongside our desire to find activities that break up the monotony of quarantine life. According to Nielsen, digital games earned $10.7B this past September alone, with mobile revenue up nearly 10% YoY.
Revolution Growth portfolio company Scopely is well-positioned to capitalize on these trends. Announced today, the company’s $340M series E funding round reflects that value proposition. Before the pandemic hit, Scopely had locked in massive growth with its acquisition of FoxNext Games LA and its highly popular MARVEL Strike Force. Big acquisitions can be challenging, especially for culture-heavy startups, but the leadership team at Scopely executed the transaction and integration with an abundance of thoughtful planning and negotiation. Scopely’s success in this arena highlights the company’s potential as an industry consolidator, layering more games on top of their existing platform and scaling at an even faster pace than expected.
We’re excited that the company has the right team and plan in place to take advantage of growing opportunities across geographies. Earlier this year, Scopely brought on former CEO of Rogue Games Mike DeLaet to oversee developer partnerships, platform relationships, licensing, and business development. This is just the latest addition to an already high-caliber senior team.
One of the things that attracted us to Scopely when we led their series C in June 2017, well before the FoxNext acquisition, was the durability of their IP with titles such as The Walking Dead: Road to Survival and Wheel of Fortune: Free Play. Since then, the company has developed the infrastructure to support massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, allowing them to grow a more diversified portfolio of games with greater efficiency. Their latest funding round opens the opportunity for the company to add even more popular titles to their existing library.
While some sectors have seen a more temporary spike in demand due to COVID, the gaming space shows no sign of slowing down. Like with e-commerce, telehealth, and other tech-driven sectors accelerated by the pandemic, the rise in the gaming sector is widely assumed to stick. Players who played previously are now more engaged, and the majority of people who recently signed on for the first time are unlikely to abandon the medium once the pandemic abates. We look forward to continuing our work with the Scopely team as they cement their position as the largest independent gaming company in the Western hemisphere.
