Triumph raises $14M for an SDK to add real-money tournaments into games

techcrunch.com:

The surge of interest in e-sports, online fantasy leagues and more extensive online financial infrastructure have made the concept of real-money gaming more popular among consumers and games developers. Today a startup called Triumph — which has built an engine, and accompanying SDK, to power real-money tournaments — is announcing $14.1 million funding to continue developing its platform to work in a wider set of markets (its currently available in 37 U.S. states plus Washington D.C.), and to bring on more customers.

Triumph has been in a quiet beta phase up to now, building some of its own games to test out the tech and working with early customers. So far the stats look promising, the startup said: when it’s plugged in, Triumph’s real-money engine increases playtime on average 3.6x per month, and it has led to $54 in average monthly revenues per player per game. Currently its focus is mobile games but the bigger aim is to expand to platforms like VR and more.

On the strength of those early numbers plus the enthusiasm and work thus-far from the founders, Triumph has managed to talk some impressive investors into backing it.

The funding is being announced for the first time today, but it actually covers both a $3.9 million seed round and a Series A of around $10.2 million. The latter is being led by General Catalyst, with Box Group, Heroic Ventures, Nostalgic Modern, RavenOne Ventures, SteelPerlot, Strike, and Valhalla Ventures also participating, while Flux led the earlier round, with Great Oaks, Heroic Ventures, Raven One, Magic Fund, Kevin Hartz and others participating. 

Some of that gaming eventually gravitated to real-money tournaments, where friends would essentially use Venmo to arrange cash wagers pay them out.