Sports Chat Platform GameOn Announces $35 Million in Funding to Expand

Many aspects of daily life went virtual during the global pandemic and talking about sports is one of them. San Francisco-based GameOn Technology offers a platform that powers a wide variety of major league sports team chat technology — across the NBA, NFL, NHL, PGA Tour, FIFA, ATP (News - Alert) and more — that enhances brand-to-fan experiences through personalized content like live scores, highlights and videos.

Last week, GameOn announced the close of a $35 million Series B funding round co-led by Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Mighty Capital, and B3 Capital. This round brings the company's total funding to nearly $54 million. Investors in the round include private investor Jim Davidson; Mark Attanasio, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers; Quest Venture Partners; the Wilf family, owners of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings; and Great Point Ventures. The funding is expected to deepen GameOn's footprint in sports and scale a range of technical, business development and marketing efforts to catapult GameOn forward into more diversified verticals like retail.

Sports fans love to talk about their favorite teams, so the GameOn platform leverages intelligent chat, empowering teams and sports brands to connect with audiences in real time and drive more engagement to better understand fan profiles on almost any channel in addition to existing customer support and service functions. GameOn is used by teams like Arsenal F.C., the Milwaukee Bucks and the Las Vegas Raiders; and is backed by dozens of athlete investors including names like NFL legend Joe Montana, NBA Hall of Famer Gary Payton, NBA players Andre Iguodala and Mo Bamba, and more.

The company noted that its chat experience generates enormous conversational depth and drives click-through rates from users over 50 percent of the time, including up to 65 percent on commerce-related content while delivering 10 times the user engagement when compared to traditional paid search. This presents a unique brand opportunity to drive revenue across verticals beyond sports.

"We're excited not only to continue to scale up our foothold in the sports industry but also increase our reach and influence over the chat space as a whole," said GameOn CEO and Co-Founder Alex Beckman. "Chat has always been used as a defensive tool, but there are over 3 billion people chatting every day. GameOn has unlocked the chat experience and turned it into an offensive, revenue-generating machine for a wide variety of teams and industries to develop a deeper and more substantial relationship with their consumers."

Edited by Erik Linask