Gamesville.com Raises Over $14 Million in First Venture Round
Game show site Gamesville.com has raised over $14 million in first-round venture funding, led by Flatiron Partners, and added four investors to its board.
Gamesville.com has closed its first round of venture financing at over $14 million, with Flatiron Partners leading and SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, and General Catalyst Internet Partners joining in. That is a lot of money for a site that gives its games away.
The pitch is the audience. Over 1.4 million registered players show up for the site’s real-time, massively multiplayer game shows and win prizes for free, while advertisers like Virgin Atlantic, eBay, J.C. Penney, Rolling Stone, and SmithKline Beecham pay to target slices of that crowd through the company’s marketing database. Free games as the bait, demographic data as the product.
The deal also reshuffles the boardroom. Jerry Colonna of Flatiron, Charley Lax of SOFTBANK, and Brian Bedol and David Fialkow of General Catalyst all take seats, joining GeoCities founder David Bohnett, whose appointment was announced earlier.