FACEIT secures $15m to expand eSports tournament organisation service

Competitive gaming platform FACEIT has today raised $15m in Series A funding in order to expand to more games and communities.

The service allows tournament organisers to easily draft brackets and initiate matches for players competing in Dota, CS:GO or other team-based eSports events, as well as distribute prizes for smaller leagues.

Funding was provided by investment firms Anthos Capital, Index Ventures and United Ventures, the latter of which provided a further $2m of seeding capital in March 2015.

In the past year, the platform’s growth to 3m users playing three games a day has been fueled by partnerships with publishers and premier tournament providers, such as Valve’s Dota Majors qualifiers and DreamHack owners MTG.

"With this round of funding, we will be able to further our three-pronged mission for a competitive gaming platform," said founder and CEO of FACEIT, Niccolo Maisto. "A robust competitive community for players and organisers, an easy-to-implement competitive layer for developers, and custom offerings for brands, tied to their products and services."

Maisto confirmed to eSports Pro that the funding would be used to expand the product across further games, as well as increasing the number of organisers and communities that are able to create competitions on the platform.

"In other words," Maisto said, "more games, more organisers and better competitions."

Parts of the funding will also be used to support a recent operational expansion to a new Los Angeles office, the first on American soil for the London-based company.

It is hoped the new office, as well as a partnerships and marketing team, will create new game integrations and product features.

FACEIT has proven an ability to build mutually successful partnerships with game publishers, major media companies, and other industry leaders” says Ben Holmes at Index Ventures. The company is helping developers engage more deeply with their player base by offering an easy to integrate competitive layer into their games. FACEIT is emerging as a major player in the competitive gaming ecosystem.”