Make.TV continues to bolster its live streaming resume.
The Seattle-based startup has expanded its partnership with ESL, the world’s largest esports organization that runs competitions across the world and produces more than 1,500 hours of content annually. Later this month, Make.TV will stream action from the ESL One Mumbai, India’s first-ever major Dota 2 tournament with a $300,000 top prize.
Founded in 2016, Make.TV helps customers such as MLBAM, NBC Universal, Al Jazeera, Viacom, Fox Sports Brasil, and others stream live video content in the cloud. The 42-person company, which relocated from Germany to Seattle two years ago, is backed by some of the top investment firms in the Pacific Northwest including Microsoft’s M12, Vulcan Capital, and Voyager Capital, which led a $8.5 million Series A round in June 2017. Bruce Chizen, the former CEO of Adobe, is on the company’s board.
Make.TV’s technology acts like a video router of sorts, allowing companies to take live video from a variety of sources and deliver it to any device on any platform, said Andreas Jacobi, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
“Simply put, we empower content creators to share their video with production teams working for TV networks, cable companies, esports and sports networks or any other type of video-based media,” he said. “We also simplify the work of the production teams by automating a number of tasks — sifting through lots of data; identifying content libraries to pick a short segment from; routing content to post-production houses, regional broadcasters and social media channels — enabling them to dedicate more time to what they do best: create content we all want to watch.”
The company offers a similar service to Portland-based Elemental, which Amazon Web Services bought two years ago for just under $300 million. Other competitors include IBM, Google, Alibaba, and smaller startups.
With more people watching live video online and the growth of platforms such as Twitch, the live streaming industry is expected to surpass $13 billion this year.
Make.TV is ranked No. 165 on the GeekWire 200, our index of top Pacific Northwest startups. This past October it hired former Cadent executive Tricia Iboshi as its chief operating officer.
