It pays to be good at video games — just ask players on the New York Subliners competitive Call of Duty team.

Belong Gaming Arenas, a subsidiary of global gaming and technology company Vindex, announced on Monday its partnership with the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District.

The partnership will help establish scholastic esports programs and support the nationwide development of the amateur esports ecosystem. Tapping into its network of local gaming centers, Belong will provide dedicated practice and competition space for approximately 40,000 students.

Esports involves the world of competitive video gaming. Colleges have started giving out scholarships for playing and professionals can make millions.

There was some head-scratching across the big tech and gaming worlds in January when Microsoft announced an agreement to buy Activision Blizzard, a leading videogame publisher, for $68.7 billion. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella framed its largest acquisition ever as a boost to the company’s growing metaverse strategy, even though Activision is best known for blockbuster games such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush, but not the mix of AR/VR and other technology underpinning the fledgling metaverse.

As gaming advertising takes center stage, companies across the industry are developing new measurement tools and metrics to increase brands’ confidence in their efforts.

Brand interest in the space has steadily increased over the past year, sparking a buzz of activity at industry events such as IAB PlayFronts and Digiday’s own Gaming Advertising Forum. Recently, both Microsoft and Sony have indicated plans to develop in-game advertisements for Xbox and PlayStation, their respective gaming platforms.

Despite this influx of activity, many marketers still believe it’s too difficult — or at least not worth the trouble — to measure the performance of gaming ads, particularly those of the intrinsic in-game variety. “It’s understandable why most big advertisers are a little bit hesitant about playing in this space,” said Mike Sepso, CEO of the gaming and tech company Vindex. “They’ve been told they don’t understand it, they’re outdated, they don’t get it — but they haven’t been given any tools to better understand it”.

A lot of esports media tends to focus on teams winning championships and exposing negative behaviour from individuals and companies. They both serve a purpose, but so too do success stories. In a nascent industry that's largely failed to convert an influx of venture capital investment into sustainability, never mind profitability, it's important to highlight those that manage to make it happen.

Everything Is Better with Creators Podcast Interview with Mike Sepso.

Vindex, a global gaming technology company, today announced a partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the digital media and marketing trade association, to unlock the full extent of media and sponsorship opportunities in gaming, esports, and live streaming for brands and advertisers. Launching today, the Vindex Intelligence Platform, will leverage the company’s vast data collection capability across the games content ecosystem, combined with a powerful insights and analytics platform to equip stakeholders with actionable measurement, growth, and engagement solutions.

“The Vindex Intelligence Platform is a major step toward overcoming a key hurdle of decentralized data and measurement in the game content ecosystem,” said Mike Sepso, CEO & Co-founder, Vindex. “The platform provides brands and agencies with a better understanding of the gaming audience and gives advertisers the confidence to navigate this continually evolving space. In partnership with the IAB, we’ll have a unique opportunity to bring game publishers, esports teams, and the larger creator economy together with advertisers.”

The video game industry is in the midst of a significant business model shift. Publishers have started to pivot from the unit-sales model they have relied on for the last 40 years, toward the free-to-play approach popularized over the last half decade (see: Halo Infinite, Call of Duty Warzone). “There’s no technology disruption causing that. It is totally consumer driven,” Mike Sepso (CEO, Vindex) said. While the transition is likely to cause some short-term pain for many publishers, the gaming executive believes it is unquestionably in their long-term best interests to make it. Free-to-play has the potential to drive more players, increase engagement and still generate billions of dollars in revenue (see: Fortnite)—all of which is good for the big four sports team owners who have invested in esports teams. It should be noted Sepso is an investor in Andbox, the esports club owned by the Wilpon family.

Belong Gaming Arenas is a subsidiary of global esports and technology company Vindex. In 2021, Belong revealed plans to open 300 experiential gaming centres across the US, in addition to its 27 UK venues. The aim is to create a series of safe and accessible connected spaces at the local and amateur level, as the esports trend continues to grow.

Gamers and their friends can watch, practise and compete at Belong venues. They can play leading titles on state-of-the-art equipment, due to Belong’s collaboration with PlayStation, OMEN by HP, ViewSonic, and Mavix.

"They're essentially an extension of our team,” said Tahir Hasandjekic, Halo esports lead at Microsoft. “We leverage their expertise to help us flesh out the program and help us execute. We have a smaller team here, but it takes an army to run a global esports team. So, we've hired Esports Engine to help us oversee the entire ecosystem.

FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — His reflexes are so quick, you can tell that Louis Tole spends a lot of time in front of a keyboard. "I have an Xbox at home, yea I play a lot of Apex," said Tole.

But Louis isn't playing at home, at least not on this day. He's one of dozens that have a membership at Belong Gaming Arena, the newest in-person hub for video games in our area.

Joost van Dreunen (investor / advisor / Superdata founder) and Mike Sepso (Vindex CEO / fmr Activision SVP) analyze the Take Two/Zynga, Microsoft/Activision, and Sony/Bungie acquisitions Monetizing Media's Eric Peckham. Why did they make sense, why did they happen now, and how do they reshape the industry?

New this year, Esports Engine has been named the official broadcasting partner for the 2022 Call of Duty League season, bringing a slate of new and exciting features for fans to enjoy during Call of Duty League matches.

“For a number of years, the team at Esports Engine has worked closely with Activision Blizzard Esports to create electric and unforgettable experiences in Call of Duty esports,” says Vindex CXO and Esports Engine President & Co-founder Adam Apicella. “We’re partnering with Activision Blizzard Esports to bring a number of the most skilled and passionate professionals from our team to further build on Call of Duty’s legacy.”

This deal includes a new and expanded pre-game show kicking off each match day, always-on player POV cams, live feeds of players on the HUD while matches are in progress, and much more. Esports Engine will also utilize its Ohio studio throughout the 2022 CDL Season to host on-site desk talent for Major qualifier matches.

“I think the fans will agree that the experience with competitive COD that Adam and his team at Esports Engine bring to the CDL is going to be invaluable and bring our season to the next level” says Daniel Tsay, Call of Duty League General Manager. “I can’t wait to get started with the Kickoff Classic.”

Microsoft's game strategy -- should the acquisition of Activision Blizzard close -- could have a major impact on the future of the Call of Duty League and Overwatch League. Both of those titles are currently still full-price video games for consumers (vs. free-to-play), and that drastically limits the potential player base for both games. If either game becomes part of Microsoft's subscription gaming service Game Pass, it opens up a much broader potential audience for the esports competition. “One of the reasons that esports is important to the overall video game industry is that the industry is moving from you-pay-me-$65 bucks (for a game) to free-to-play," said Vindex CEO and co-founder Mike Sepso. "That's what Game Pass is, that's the transition. I think this helps Activision with that transition. Microsoft can take that hit over a couple years to effectively transition big franchise games to a more free-to-play environment, especially under a subscription service like Game Pass.”

When Microsoft announced Tuesday its intent to buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the owners and executives for teams in Activision’s multi-million dollar esports leagues learned of the deal the same way everyone else did — by checking their phones and turning on the news.

“We are definitely surprised,” Adam Rymer, the chief executive of Envy Gaming, told The Post Tuesday. “I woke up today to see a few people from the company texting me about it and then turned on CNBC.”

Since 2015, Activision Blizzard has attempted to become the destination for competitive gaming by launching a potentially groundbreaking city-based franchise structure based on the model in traditional sports leagues. Activision sold franchise slots for upward of $20 million apiece around Overwatch and Call of Duty, two of its biggest titles, that granted owners exclusive access to local markets across North America, China, Europe and South Korea. After getting the Overwatch League off the ground in 2018, the company set an ambitious timeline to host live Overwatch competitions in front of thousands of fans across the three continents and then quickly moved on to launch the Call of Duty League in similar fashion. But, for the past two years, the pandemic has forced both leagues to dash those plans and largely move competitions online.

A new Belong Gaming Arena, which will also be home to the Schaumburg Foxes, is set to open Jan. 21, 2022 at the Streets of Woodfield, a Chicago-area, outdoor shopping mall in Schaumburg.

Major League Gaming cofounder Mike Sepso believes the games industry needs esports due to rapidly changing business models. The boon of free-to-play games and competitive gaming has changed the way publishers look to market their video games, and Sepso believes esports are key to that.

Sepso and his company Vindex, an esports infrastructure platform, are looking for better ways to sustain the esports ecosystem following the trend in how people consume games. In particular, the startup is looking at how people are spending money.

After the COVID-19 pandemic caused esports competitors to play individually from home, Belong Gaming Arenas is looking to bring people together again, in a physical space.

Belong, a subsidiary of global esports and tech company Vindex, announced it will begin opening hundreds of experimental gaming centers across the U.S. to establish a connected framework for esports at the local and amateur level. The idea is to make esports facilities more accessible, akin to ballfields or gymnasiums.

The first location will be in Houston, with venues to be added in Dallas, Chicago, Nashville and Columbus, Ohio. Its plan is to establish 500 gaming centers in the U.S. over the next five years.

“We’re going pretty big here, and we have a very ambitious plan,” said Mike Sepso, CEO and co-founder of Vindex. “So you can imagine it’s many millions of dollars that we’re pumping into making this work. This is the baseball diamond that you see at every high school or the parks and rec locations at every town across the U.S. This is the gaming version of that.

Vindex‘s Belong Gaming Arenas is opening its first U.S. location in Houston, Texas, as part of a plan to expand its chain of local esports gaming centers as the pandemic eases.

Many retailers have been stung in the pandemic as they paid high rents but were forced to close. Now many countries are starting to reopen, and Belong Gaming Arenas and its parent Vindex feel like the time is right to create the new locations in the U.S., said CEO Mike Sepso in an interview with GamesBeat. He anticipates hundreds of locations opening in the U.S.

Vindex has some ambitious plans, as it raised $300 million to open lots of centers where gamers could hang out and attend events with esports stars in cool locations. It also bought Belong Gaming Arenas, which the U.K. retailer GAME Digital was starting to create in the U.K. It may be risky as some pandemic-shy consumers may not want to go back to retail places, but others are likely itching to get out.

At Activision Blizzard, we've built a deep library of owned IP, and believe that wholly-owned entertainment franchises offer the opportunity for limitless innovation. We create and publish some of the most enduring video games in the industry, supported by the very best creative teams in the world.

Fundamentally, we want our beloved franchises to be available for players all around the world with more frequent content, in whatever format or platform they want and with the commercial model that works most broadly. A franchise is not living up to its potential or expectation if it is not available on mobile – a priority for our future. Our Call of Duty franchise now has free-to-play entry points across mobile, PC and console, and has seen an increase of over 100 million players in a little over a year. This is the template we're applying to our proven franchises as we aim to grow our audiences to 1 billion players.

Amid the coronavirus outbreak, the video game industry experienced a critical inflection point, although it went largely overlooked. Most of the media coverage focused on the massive increase in gameplay while children and adults alike were stuck at home. However, industry watchers ignored a major data point with enormous ramifications: For the first time in history, the video games business model flipped, and revenue from free-to-play games have overtaken traditional game sales.

Previously, game publishers operated like the Hollywood movie business: a long production cycle with one big release date supported by a heavy marketing spend, excess channel promotion and shortly thereafter, a move on to the next title. Game publisher stocks moved, and executive futures were determined by opening week sales reports, not unlike their counterparts in the movie business. The industry has now reached a watershed moment. The majority of revenues are driven by engagement in games that are now mostly free to play.

Vindex operate Belong Gaming Arenas, a network of local LAN areas across the United Kingdom, and esports operations company Esports Engine. In his new role, Siegner will be responsible for the finance operations of all facets of the business. The company was founded by MLG co-founders Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, as well as Bryan Binder and Jason Garmise, in October 2019. They launched with $60m in their back pocket thanks to a Series A funding round. Their new CFO has plenty of experience outside of esports, previously serving as the vice president of investor relations and mergers & acquisitions at Yum! Brands, a fast-food corporation that operates KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and other popular chains.

Wim Stocks, formerly the CEO and Chairman of CSL Esports, has joined gaming-arena developer Belong, a subsidiary of Vindex, as its Senior Vice President of Partnerships & Commercial.

Stocks joins the company after recently announcing he would be stepping down from his role at WorldGaming Network and Collegiate Starleague (now CSL Esports). At Belong he will oversee all elements of endemic and non-endemic partnerships.

“We are delighted to welcome Wim with his considerable experience across the gaming and esports industry to our team,” said Belong CEO Martyn Gibbs. “Wim will be leading our partnership strategy and engagement that will build great experiences for customers and fans alike as we establish our identity in the US and internationally.”

Partnerships and sponsorships are the lifeblood of esports, for better or for worse. Without companies investing in the industry in order to advertise their products and services, nobody knows where competitive gaming would be in its lifespan.

No matter the obstacles that are thrown its way, esports continues to successfully receive capital and use it to fuel their operations. This is the case whether it’s a tournament organizer, a team organization, or a supportive company on the periphery of the industry.

With this in mind, we’re used to seeing huge deals announced and it’s easy to lose track of the progress we’re making collectively over a longer-term. I’ve compiled what I believe to be the biggest esports partnerships of 2020, including why they’ve made the cut, as a point of reference; it’s important to document so we can better track progress in the future.

Mike Sepso — ESI Class of 2020 Hall of Fame inductee Mike Sepso — is an esports legend. The man that, along with Sundance DiGiovanni, founded Major League Gaming (MLG) is currently the CEO of Vindex — a company he also co-founded, again with DiGiovanni.

Vindex is a provider of technology and infrastructure to esports companies. Through its Esports Engine and Next Generation Esports arms, the company facilitates some of the world’s biggest esports events, providing services from programme design and management to event production and broadcasting. News broke in July that Sepso and co. had acquired GAME’s Belong Gaming Arena division while pledging to invest $300m (£222.02m) in the project. Vindex plans to roll out over 500 esports venues in the US and a further 1000 in other countries — mainly in Europe.

The middle of 2020 may not seem the best time to funnel $300m into the global roll-out of gaming arenas. Vindex is different, though. “Our infrastructure and technology enabled us to move to a remote broadcasting model,” Sepso told Esports Insider. “So we’ve been pretty lucky [during the pandemic] compared to some companies.”

Esports infrastructure company Vindex has hired sports broadcast industry veteran Marshall Zelaznik as CEO of its Esports Engine subsidiary, as it looks to deal with a rapidly growing client base that is asking to expand globally.

Vindex, which helps entities throughout competitive gaming put on live events, was founded late last year by the former Major League Gaming executives Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni plus industry veteran Adam Apicella, who also formerly worked at MLG and co-founded Esports Engine.

The company is working with publishers, teams and agencies on everything from broadcast to production to pull off various events in gaming. Apicella told SBJ that the company has quickly amassed 30 clients, all of which have come in organically through word of mouth or prior relationships because its founders are longtime respected executives in the space.

Vindex announced the purchase of Belong Gaming on Wednesday and plans to spend $300 million over the next five years to open 1,000 esports gaming centers around the world, according to Esports Observer. Belong will partner with esports conglomerates Envy and Andbox to open locations in the Dallas and New York City areas respectively.

Belong, which already operates 24 gaming arena locations across the United Kingdom, was valued in the acquisition at about $50 million, per the Financial Times. Belong will provide the logistical operations in getting these gaming centers off the ground, and Envy and Andbox will bring events, marketing and pro gamers from the different esports teams they own to bring programming and awareness to help centralize the local gaming scenes in their home markets.

Each flagship location in Dallas and New York will provide 100 PCs and consoles for parties, events, school outings, clubs and local esports tournaments. Obviously given the coronavirus pandemic, the timing for when these locations will open is yet unknown.

Vindex has acquired the hometown esports Belong Gaming Arenas brand and all associated IP from European game retail giant GAME Digital.

Vindex plans to open more than 500 Belong locations in hometowns across America, and another 1,000 locations outside of the U.S. through its licensed operating partners —including GAME — over the next five years.

Esports Insider sat down with Vindex CEO and Co-founder Mike Sepso, who explained why localisation has become so vital to the esports ecosystem.

“I think that overall, the industry acknowledges that localization is an important part of the growth of esports,” said Sepso, using the Overwatch League as an example. “Everything can’t happen just online or in big city arenas. What we’re trying to do is bring the esports experience through the Belong system to home towns across America. That’s key for us.”

Esports infrastructure company Vindex is set to acquire GAME’s Belong gaming arena division, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Vindex, which was founded by MLG co-founders Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, launched in October following a launched with $60 million (£46.6 million) Series A.

Belong currently owns esports facilities in Bradford, Gateshead, Hull, Manchester, Teesside, York, Preston, Colchester, Milton Keyes, Norwich, Bristol, Kingston, London, Portsmouth, Sutton, West Thurrock, Glasgow, Cardiff, Wrexham, Craigavon, and Ballymena.

Game Digital is set to sell its Belong Gaming Arenas to US start-up Vindex in a deal thought to be worth $50 million.

Belong Gaming Arenas’ brand and intellectual property will now be owned by Vindex, but Game will continue to own and operate the arenas with an exclusive licence.

Game, which was purchased by Sports Direct and House of Fraser mogul Mike Ashley last year for £52 million, will also see its chief executive Martyn Gibbs join Vindex’s management team as head of Belong Gaming.

Since launching in 2017 21 Belong gaming arenas have been opened, often next to or as part of Game’s retail stores.

The arenas feature a range of high-end gaming PCs, consoles and accessories like VR headsets, allowing players to try out new games and technology before investing in a purchase.

Crucially these arenas host competitive gaming tournaments, marking Game’s attempt to shift its reliance on dwindling hardware sales towards the increasingly lucrative esports sector.

Vindex, the leading global esports infrastructure company, announced today that it has acquired the Belong Gaming Arenas brand and all associated IP from GAME DIGITAL LIMITED ("GAME"), the largest video games retailer in the UK and Spain. GAME operates over 500 video game retail stores and launched Belong in 2016 to build a network of local gaming communities that play, watch, and compete together in state-of-the-art gaming centers.

Vindex will operate Belong Gaming in the US from its New York headquarters, and immediately begin rolling out Belong Arenas across the country. The deal marks the next phase in Vindex's vision to support the growth of the global esports industry and to bring amateur esports to hometowns across the country, and around the world. Belong Gaming will partner with Esports Engine, a Vindex company, to provide turnkey amateur esports league design, operations, and tournaments through Vindex's powerful software platform that will power Belong Arenas and connect all of its global members. Vindex plans to invest $300M over the next five years to open more than 500 Belong locations in the US and an additional 1,000 locations globally through licensed operating partners including GAME.

Martyn Gibbs, CEO of GAME Digital and video game industry veteran, will join the Vindex management team as CEO of Belong Gaming to oversee the immediate US rollout and initiate a global expansion strategy. GAME will continue to operate all UK locations as an officially licensed operator.

Since launching last October with the acquisitions of Next-Generation Esports (NGE) and Esports Engine, Vindex has grown into one of the major providers of esports-production services and infrastructure. Now, with the live sports world at a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, live online esports events have entered the spotlight, and Vindex finds itself in prime position to serve the only live-competition game in town.

“The thesis behind Vindex investing in the production side of the business was to find the best in class companies and create one big network of global solutions across the full esports ecosystem,” says Vindex CEO Mike Sepso, who previously co-founded esports pioneer Major League Gaming. “We believed that a bigger global solutions provider with institutional backing would have better capacity to take on massive, complex esports events compared to smaller companies that are taking existential risks. And, since we acquired NGE, we have continued investing deeply into their technology infrastructure and have been able to provide capital backing to think ahead of the curve.”

Mike Sepso has been involved with esports for about as long as it's been called esports.

Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz recently, Sepso explains why he and Sundance DiGiovanni co-founded Major League Gaming back in 2002 and what need in the market that outfit was intended to fill.

"We saw that people liked to compete in video games against each other, and there was some semblance of professionalized esports or competitive gaming happening in South Korea," he says. "What we thought was that was an interesting place to combine our passions for sports and video games, and help elevate competitive gaming into a professional sport. At the time, the game publishers and studios were really not interested in that at all, and certainly not interested in turning it into a business. If anything, it was just sort of a marketing or community engagement effort."

Imax, known for large screen experiences in movie theaters, has signed a deal with Vindex, which will produce and facilitate esports events and experiences exclusively for Imax theaters.

While details are scarce, the two companies have said that that Imax will show broadcasts of different esports events and content across its worldwide network of big screens. According to Imax, the company has over 1,500 IMAX theatres in over 80 countries and territories around the world.

“Coming off our biggest year ever at the box office, it’s clear that audiences around the world see Imax as a go-to destination for fandom, community and the most immersive entertainment experiences,” Imax CEO Rich Gelfond said in a release announcing the deal Friday. “We’ve long seen the opportunity to bring the explosive world of esports to our platform and we’re excited to work with proven innovators like Mike, Sundance and the Vindex team to create entirely new experiences for fans worldwide.”

Recently-launched esports infrastructure company Vindex has established a partnership with Canadian cinema company IMAX.

Founded by MLG co-founders Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, Vindex will create esports events and exclusive content to be shown in IMAX cinemas on a global scale.

It’s expected that multiple events across numerous titles will be broadcast in IMAX cinemas globally through the newly-launched Vindex Studios division. The partnership is expected to kick things off in the first half of the year, according to Variety.

Mike Sepso, CEO of Vindex discussed the deal in a release: “The Esports industry has never before had access to the massive reach and unmatched technology of the IMAX platform. Partnering with IMAX enables us to provide esports fans a remarkable experience – live esports on the largest, highest-quality screens in the world for the first time. We will focus on creating incredible experiences for fans by combining our deep relationships with esports leagues and game-publisher partners with our track record of producing some of the most watched events in esports history.”

Imax Corp. is venturing into the world of esports with a new partnership with Vindex.

Under the deal, the New York esports infrastructure platform will create events and experiences exclusively for the giant-screen movie company's theaters across the world.

Vindex launched in October with $60 million in funding to provide technology and services to help game publishers, leagues and teams put on esports experiences. The company at the same time announced that it had acquired Burbank, California-based Next Generation Esports and launched Esports Engine in Columbus, Ohio — both of which will contribute content for Imax distribution.

Hold on to your popcorn: An Imax location near you could soon be beaming live competitive video-game action onto its big screens.

Imax has inked a partnership with Vindex (vindex.gg), an esports infrastructure startup formed by Major League Gaming co-founders Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, under which Vindex will create esports events and experiences exclusively for Imax theaters worldwide.

For now, the companies aren’t providing details about what games or esports events will be featured in Imax’s big-screen venues (much less what the ticket prices may be). The parties are aiming to kick things off in the first half of 2020.

Sawtelle-based investment bank Creo Montminy & Co. drove two major acquisitions of Los Angeles-area companies in the last week.

The firm, which worked with the selling party in both deals, managed the sale of esports production company Next Generation Esports and food distributor Worldwide Produce from conception to closing.

Burbank-headquartered Next Generation Esports, better known as NGE, was founded in 2014 to provide production services to companies across the esports space. This includes facilitating esports league competitions, organizing live events and studio broadcasts as well as providing consulting services on a range of related subjects.

Today, Vindex announced its launch with initial funding of $60M to build a global esports infrastructure platform. Additionally, the company made the acquisition of Next Generation Esports (NGE) and the launch of Esports Engine (both companies in esports operations, production, and technology) public.

Vindex was founded by esports industry veterans Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni, co-founders of Major League Gaming (MLG), which was acquired in 2015 by Activision Blizzard; as well as Bryan Binder and Jason Garmise, fintech entrepreneurs and private investors.

The rising hype surrounding esports has presented the industry with one big hurdle: The lack of scalable technology to meet the demands of an immense, digitally-based audience.

That’s where a company known as Vindex could step in.

Backing the company is famed value investor Joel Greenblatt, who expects Vindex is in a position to meet the demand and solve this problem plaguing esports.

MLG Co-founder Mike Sepso reveals the launch of Vindex, an esports infrastructure platform that's launching with $60 Million Series A round.

Former Activision Blizzard vice president Adam Apicella announced the launch of his new company, Esports Engine, on Wednesday.

A "client-first turnkey esports operations company," Esports Engine was co-founded by Apicella with Ryan Thompson and 20 "teammates" who have been working behind the scenes over the past two months at the company's headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

The company will focus on competition operations, production, live broadcast and ecosystem design.

MLG co-founders Mike Sepso and Sundance DiGiovanni have launched esports infrastructure platform Vindex.

The company, which was also co-founded by Bryan Binder and Jason Garmise, has launched with $60 million (£46.6 million) in funding following its Series A round.

Vindex’s board members include the likes of Steve Bornstein, former CEO of ESPN, and Joel Greenblatt, Founder of Gotham Asset Management. The platform is said to provide “technology and services that power the richest experiences in esports” by helping “publishers, esports leagues and teams,” according to a release.