SLIVER.tv, the leading esports 360º virtual reality entertainment platform, announced the close of a $9.8 million series A round of equity funding, led by Danhua Capital, along with Heuristic Capital Partners and ZP Capital. With total funding of $17.5 million to date, the Series A round was also participated by SLIVER.tv’s existing seed investors, including DCM, Sierra Ventures, The VR Fund, Samsung Next Fund and Sony Innovation Fund.
Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of SLIVER.tv, said: “I’m thrilled to welcome Danhua Capital, Heuristic Capital Partners and ZP Capital to the SLIVER.tv family. Our platform today enables our global fans to connect and truly experience esports in a whole new perspective. We’re on the cutting edge developing the next-generation live streaming technology, and this new funding will accelerate our R&D investments in machine vision, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.”
Dovey Wan, managing director of Danhua Capital, said: “We are very excited to partner with SLIVER.tv. Mitch and his team are fundamentally transforming the live spectator experience for global esports fans with their patented video streaming technology. Together with a new interactive engagement model, 360 esports content, and a novel incentive model for streamers, tournament organizers, and esports fans, we firmly believe they are ready to disrupt the industry with their next-gen multimedia entertainment platform.”
Since launching last year, SLIVER.tv has broadcast numerous global esports tournaments in 360º VR in partnership with premier brands including ESL One, DreamHack and Intel Extreme Masters. At key events in the US and Europe, SLIVER.tv has live streamed top esports games to millions of fans of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and League of Legends (LoL).
SLIVER.tv beta launched its Watch & Win esports platform in July 2017, and since then the company has attracted hundreds of thousands of esports fans spending over 500 million virtual coins by actively participating and engaging with live esports matches. These users have viewed over 50 million minutes of esports streams, nearly 100 years worth of content in the past few weeks.
SLIVER.tv’s patented virtual camera array technology captures 2D games played on a PC such as CS:GO and League of Legends, and renders in real-time a fully immersive 360° in-world stream. It is analogous to placing the viewer or spectator inside the game and giving them courtside seats with VR. The company’s pending patents cover the automatic highlight and generation of key in-game moments utilizing machine vision and a new video encoding algorithm for non-concentric spherical projection for multi-resolution view.
