Major League Gaming Picks Up $7.5M For Competitive Gaming

Professional video game league Major League Gaming announced that it secured a $7.5 million investment from Oak Investment Partners. The same venture capital firm previously invested $25 million into the company in Series B funding in 2006. Prior to that, Major League Gaming gained $10 million in a Series A round from Ritchie Capital. According to the company's CEO and president Matthew Bromberg, the new capital will go towards its efforts to create a global and cross-platform business to support its vision to "to build the first digital sport the world had ever seen" with competitive gaming. Major League Gaming noted several statistics indicating its growth as a sports media business in 2008, such as a 1337 percent year-over-year increase in its online broadcast audience, counting 503,000 unique males under 30 watching its Dallas Playoffs event in October. The company also says that an average of 15,000 people attended each of its live competitions in 2008, up 500 percent over 2007. Visitors to its online site numbered at 7 million unique users per month, 107 percent over 2007. “MLG has become a cultural phenomenon, and the management team has made competitive gaming really matter for pros, fans, and marketers,” says Oak Investment Partners managing partner Ed Glassmeyer. “We have great confidence that the company will continue this path to success and that the challenging economic environment will provide new opportunities for investment and growth.