GAMING

INDUSTRY

REPORT
 TOTAL FUNDING AND ROUNDS
GAMING INDUSTRY STARTUPS GLOBALLY SINCE 2013

$3bn
144
132
118
$2bn
93
78

$1bn

16

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 (2018)

REPORT BY

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

The black bars show the total number of rounds in
the gaming industry since 2013.
The amount of global funding in the industry yearly
is represented by the blue line.
Gaming industry funding peaked in 2017. The
number of rounds peaked two years before that and
have been on a decline, meaning round-sizes have
gotten bigger since.
The average round size throughout the years has
been $11m, but in 2017 it was almost $29m.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 2

 GAMING INDUSTRY FUNDING
COMPARED TO GLOBAL FUNDING AND INDEXED TO 100 IN 2013

500 REPORT BY

400

300

200

100

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 (2018)

GLOBAL GAMING

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

The pink line represents gaming startups’ funding While global funding has been rather stable, the
indexed to 100 in 2013 and the grey line represents gaming startups’ funding peaked in 2017, where the
global funding indexed to 100 in 2013. industry’s startups raised $2.3bn.

This makes it possible to compare global funding Until the peak, the industry funding has been
and industry funding despite big differences in growing steadily with only a very slight dip in 2016,
total funding. where funding was at $963m.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 3

 FUNDING BY REGION
GLOBAL GAMING STARTUP INVESTMENTS SINCE 2013

$1,2bn REPORT BY

$1bn

$800m

$600m

$400m

$200m

2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 (2018)

NORTH AMERICA EUROPE ASIA

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

Each line is color-coded by region and divided by
year.
For definitions of regions, please see definitions.
Asia took a huge jump in gaming industry funding
in 2017 reaching $1bn, the all-time highest out of all
regions.
North America achieved it’s peak in 2015, where the
industry funding reached $753m. Europe has grown
modestly until 2017, where it reached $623m in
funding.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 4

 TOTAL INDUSTRY FUNDING BY REGION
COMPARED TO OVERALL FUNDING SINCE 2013

REPORT BY

0,84% $2,7B
1,60%
$1,3B

$85,7B

TOTAL FUNDING
1,31%
$1,6B
$324,8B

TOTAL FUNDING
$121,7B

EUROPE TOTAL FUNDING

ASIA
0,58%
NORTH AMERICA
$55M
$9,5B

GAMING REST OF THE WORLD

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

The size of each pie chart represents the total Europe has the highest share of its total funding
amount of startup funding in each respective region going to the gaming industry startups out of all
since 2013. three regions.

The slices show how much of this total funding Although North America has the highest industry
went to startups in the gaming industry. funding, it has the smallest share of it’s total funding
going to gaming related startups.
For definitions of regions, please see definitions.


GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 5

 GAMING STARTUP INVESTMENTS
SHARE OF TOTAL FUNDING SINCE 2013 IN EUROPE

REPORT BY
24%

5%
1%
1%

8%

3%
1% 2%
9%
1%
4%

1%
3%

1%

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

The darker the color of the country, the higher the Central Europe stands out from the map due to its
percentage of total funding going to gaming higher share of total funding going to gaming
startups. Data is collected since 2013. industry startups.

Countries in grey have less than 1% of their funding Iceland has 24% of it total startup funding going to
going to the industry.
 gaming startups mainly due to an interactive
entertainment company CCP Games who raised
$50m.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 6

 TOP COUNTRIES IN THE INDUSTRY
GAMING INDUSTRY TOTAL INVESTMENT SINCE 2013

REPORT BY
bn

n
6b
16
$3

$30bn $6 $3bn
ALL STARTUPS
GAMING

$20bn $2bn

$10bn $1bn
s

na

om

nd

ia

n
te

an
or

ai

e
an

al
hi

ed
la

Sp
a

gd
ap

tr
m
nl
St

er

Sw
us
er
Fi
ng

in

itz
d

A
G
K
te

Si

Sw
d
ni

te
U

ni
U

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

This chart shows the top 10 countries with the
highest funding in the gaming industry, which is
represented by the pink bars.
This data is compared to the total funding in the
country, represented by the grey bars.
All data is collected from 2013 onward.
The United States is the country with the most
funding, almost $2.7bn, going to gaming startups.
Out of the top 10 countries with the highest gaming
industry funding, Singapore is the one that gives
the highest percentage, almost 7%, of its total
funding to startups in the industry. In the US, it’s just
0.8%.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 7

 INDUSTRY CORRELATIONS
NUMBER OF GAMING STARTUPS ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER INDUSTRIES

REPORT BY

196 134
129
500 SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
3D
RECREATION

MOBILE
PLATFORMS

53 104 127
FAMILY SOCIAL NEWS
MEDIA AND MEDIA
51
109
VIDEO 94 EDUCATION
SPORTS

READING THE CHART KEY TAKE-AWAY

The circles represent startups in the gaming
industry, who are associated with other industries.
Note that a startup can be associated with several
industries.
The size of each circle corresponds to the number
of startups associated with that particular industry.

Not surprisingly, a majority of gaming industry
startups are related to either mobile platforms or
software development.
Mobile platforms is the leading industry, of which
13,5% of all gaming industry startups in our
database are also associated with it.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 8

 MOST FUNDED STARTUPS
ALL TIME IN THE INDUSTRY

Name HQ Bio Funds raised

Zynga USA Zynga makes online social and mobile games. $1,1bn

Face++ is a leading face recognition company who aims at

Megvii CHN providing compact, powerful, and cross-platform vision $634m
service.

Improbable is a London-based startup that has developed a

Improbable GBR platform for third parties to build vast virtual and simulated $554m
worlds.

FanDuel USA FanDuel offers fantasy sports with daily games for real $416m
money.

Kabam is a mobile gaming company developing free-to-play

Kabam USA core games available on mobile devices, the web, and other $245m
platforms.

Niantic USA Niantic builds augmented reality platform for current and $225m
future generations of AR hardware.

Trion Worlds USA Defining games and original entertainment for the $185m
connected world.

Scopely USA Scopely is the leading touchscreen entertainment network. $159m

RockYou is an interactive media company that owns and

RockYou USA partners with dozens of game titles across Facebook, web $139m
and mobile.
MindMaze is pioneering a breakthrough computing platform
MindMaze CHE that captures brain activity upon intent, creating a new $109m
operating system for computers - a brain O/S - with initial
applications in the healthcare and gaming industries.

GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018 9

ABOUT FUNDERBEAM
Funderbeam is creating a world where companies
are funded and traded across borders.
Companies can raise funds through syndicated
equity crowdfunding, raising from 100’s of investors
globally, and only adding one contact point to their
cap table. All investments are tradable on the
blockchain, so investors can choose when to return
on investments instead of waiting +5 years for an
exit. On top, Funderbeam has free data on +180k
startups and investors, helping both groups make
smarter investment and business decisions.
GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018
Funderbeam consists of 3 parts:
• Free world-class data intelligence for investors
and founders.
• Funding: Private/crowd syndicates for equity
funding.
• Trading: All investments are instantly tradable;
investors choose how long to keep investment. All
trades are secured by blockchain.
To get started, go to Funderbeam.com.
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DEFINITIONS
Regions
Evaluating funding trends and aggregating numbers
on a global scale can be misleading. Due to the
sheer difference in funding activity in different
regions, global sums may not tell the full story. For
example, a moderate increase or decrease in
funding activity in North America might overpower
a significant increase or decrease in European
funding activity simply because of a rift in the
absolute funding amount within each region. To
reduce the effect of these powerhouses on
emerging regions, we’ve split the data into four
different regions so funding trends can be evaluated
on a more appropriate basis. Those regions are as
follows:

North America: Canada, The US, and Mexico.

Europe: Europe including Israel and Russia.
 The sustainability industry consists of tags like
ASIA: All countries in Asia.
 'biodegradable', 'biodiesel', 'biofules', 'biofuel', 'bio-
RoW: Rest of world consists of all countries not
included in the other three regions.
RoW groups together countries like Australia with
Middle Eastern, African, and South American
countries. These are not related, but from 2012 until
today, they only constitute about 2.5% of global
funding, so for meaningful comparison of the other
three regions, we’ve grouped these three together.
GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018
Industries (Tag clusters)
Grouping startups by industry can be a tricky
process. Due to the prevalence of tech startups,
along with the inherently disruptive nature of
innovative companies, it’s difficult to draw clear
boundaries between industries. Classical industry
classifications are too broad to capture the essence
of the startup world, but allowing each startup to
populate its own space would make any comparison
of trends meaningless.
To address this, we’ve used thousands of descriptive
tags and clustered them into 54 industries that
capture the diversity of the startup world while
maintaining meaningful comparability. This way,
patterns and trends in funding across different
industries can be evaluated over time.
based', 'clean energy', 'clean technology', 'clean
tech', 'cleantech', 'eco', 'eco friendly', 'eco friendly
products', 'ecofriendly', 'ecotech', 'eco-friendly',
'eco-friendly products', 'eco-responsible',
'environment', 'environmental services',
'environnment', 'environmental', 'environmentally
friendly', 'environmental monitoring', 'environmental
service', 'green', 'green energy', 'greentech',
'organic', 'organic food', 'recycling', 'recycle',
'recyclage', 'renewable', 'renewable energy',
'renewables', 'renewables and environment',
'sustainable', ‘sustainability'.
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DATA SOURCES
Funderbeam data
Powering a data platform as large as Funderbeam’s
requires an extensive amount of both automatic and
manual work. In order to piece together an accurate
picture of the startup environment globally, we
collect data from a wide variety of sources, clean it
and structure it, and then run it through a number of
fine-tuned algorithms to bring out the story behind
the numbers.
Collecting the Data
Data is collected from a combination of public
sources, strategic partnerships, and the crowd.
Sources include social media profiles such as
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as media
outlets, blogs, and filings. The web pages of the
startups themselves also provide valuable data.
Partners include CrunchBase and regional partners
across Europe.
Structuring the Data
The amount of data available on startups has
increased dramatically over the last few years to the
point that too much data is an equal issue to the
lack of it. In order to find and make use of the data,
it must be cleaned and structured.
To address this, we use both automatic processing
and manual verification to update our data.
GAMING REPORT 2018 funderbe.am/gaming-2018
Data coming from different sources is cross-
checked for validity. In cases where the same data
from different sources are in conflict with each
other, a thorough series of algorithms is run to
determine which data is most likely to be correct.
In addition, data on our platform is constantly being
maintained by dedicated data administrators and
analysts. Every suggested edit to the data by the
crowd only makes it to the platform once it’s been
manually verified by our team.
Analyzing the Data
The data is run through a number of machine
learning algorithms that have been tuned and
statistically analyzed using hundreds of thousands
of data points. These algorithms give insight beyond
the amount of funding a startup has raised and the
number of Twitter followers they have.
Natural language processing is also leveraged to
extract meaningful data from news articles, allowing
machines to process thousands of articles in the
time it would take a human to read one.
The data in this version of the report is extracted
from our database on the 17th of April 2018, and
rounds are still coming in, so final numbers may vary
slightly later.
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