Buko Ventures Invests in AcadArena: Esports Platform for Philippines Schools

We are excited to announce our new investment in AcadArena, a platform to empower esports leagues and student gaming communities at schools across the Philippines. The esports industry is booming around the world and online gaming is particularly popular in the Philippines. AcadArena already has over 300 schools and over 30,000 students participating in events using their services with significant marketing partnerships generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue to date.

As the platform grows, not only does AcadArena provide very empowering tools for the esports & education communities in Southeast Asia, but the platform also serves as an increasingly valuable content distribution channel for brands looking to communicate with the next generation of consumers in the rising middle class around the region.

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The founding team gives us a lot of confidence. They are passionate gamers and also very talented developers and designers. The CEO Ariane Lim kickstarted the campus gaming movement in the Philippines while serving as an executive at Garena, the leading gaming publisher in Southeast Asia. Justin Banusing was a pioneer of the esports community at the University of Washington where he is a graduating senior studying information design and data science. During college he also worked for ESPN’s new esports department. Kevin Hoang previously managed scholastic gaming at Amazon’s Twitch platform and is one of the leading experts on campus esports in the world.

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While gaming is well-established on a personal and social level, it is still the very early days for esports as a more formal industry. One analysis from Alex Taussig at Lightspeed Venture Partners noted that, while e-sports is surprisingly already the 2nd most popular sport in the United States based on viewership numbers, it only generates 1/10th the revenues compared to more established traditional sports. There is lots of upside. Additionally, as access to affordable mobile data continues to improve in the Philippines, this should further accelerate the growth of online gaming, especially in provincial areas where 80% of the population lives but data speeds have often been too slow for high-quality gaming experiences. In the same way that traditional school sports are a massive category of the overall sports industry, the same should happen as the esports industry develops and we’re very excited to back the leading company powering this movement in the Philippines.

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Buko Ventures is excited to support AcadArena’s upcoming initiatives to build campus esports programs in the Philippines. If you are interested in adding esports into your local campus community or in sharing your brand with young gamers across the Philippines, feel free to reach out to Ariane and her team.

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