Phenix scores $16m+ funding
April 19, 2021
Phenix, the real-time streaming technology platform, has announced closing $16.7 million (€13.8m) in Series B funding at a valuation of $90 million. This brings total funding for the company to approximately $40 million. The oversubscribed round was led by Chicago based sports/tech VC firm KB Partners with participation from Verizon Ventures and Manheim Investments.
“KB Partners is proud to have led the Series B funding round. Having led the previous rounds and being the first institutional investor in Phenix, we saw the massive market potential for the cutting-edge technology the company was developing. We believe the company is now poised for exponential growth as the sports and betting industries begin to leverage Phenix’s highly differentiated real-time technology.” said Keith Bank, KB Partners CEO and Founder.
During the past year sports venues have been empty, exacerbating the desire for fans to interact with content and with each other and driving the need to stream games in real-time. Phenix says it will use its new funding to accelerate its road map of innovative features and functionality, enabling rights holders, broadcasters and operators to deliver more engaging content and streams to their fans in real-time. For example, at the recently run Cheltenham Festival, Phenix set daily records using WebRTC to stream horse races to 500,000 peak concurrent users.
“In the quickly changing world of sports and entertainment, gamification, micro wagering, and interactive fan experiences are necessary to compete and encourage digital engagement,” said Kristina Serafim, Managing Director of Verizon Ventures. “The team at Phenix is enabling this next evolution through its unparalleled real-time streaming video technology. We are proud to support their ongoing growth.”
“Phenix is experiencing greater engagement around real-time streaming than ever before. With a number of recent commercial successes, the Series B raise puts us in a position to add resources and to capitalise on the burgeoning demand for real-time streaming” said Roy Reichbach, CEO of Phenix.