Robert Maxwell, managing partner of Houston-based investment firm Chowning Group, is bullish on esports and new media.
Chowning Group focuses on investing into lower-middle market firms across industries, but a longtime interest in video games by Maxwell, 26, led him to form Houston-based Enterprise Gaming in April 2020. Chowning Group invested in Enterprise Gaming with $2.5 million in seed financing, the companies announced last year.
Since launching last spring, much of Enterprise Gaming has been focused on buying professional esports player contracts playing Epic Games' hit competitive shooter Fortnite. In addition to professional players, Enterprise also signs content creators generating digital content.
“What we do is, we have an exclusive right to all of their content — the media that they generate as a byproduct of them playing video games or creating content,” Maxwell said. “We have an exclusive right to it, and we advertise on it, we monetize the streams, we sell sponsorships against that.”
With the company's COO and head of talent based out of London, Enterprise’s first eight player signings came out of Europe. Recruiting talent out of Europe instead of North America when launching helped Enterprise establish a foothold in the crowded esports space and to be conservative with capital deployment, Maxwell said. The group has seen some turnover since launching, but new creators have since been signed by Enterprise. The company has signed a total of 23 different players and content creators over the past 12 months, Maxwell said.
This year, Maxwell said Enterprise Gaming is focused on continuing to develop the roster with competitive Fortnite talent, as well as competing in various online charity tournaments. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it’s been difficult to set up local tournaments to compete in, but Enterprise hopes some of those opportunities will begin to arise this summer.
Enterprise is also focused on raising capital to support its growth. With a growing online following — the group has tens of thousands of followers across its various social media channels — and a competitive roster, Maxwell said Enterprise aims to open fundraising to outside investors. He hopes to have additional details around fundraising for Enterprise later this summer.
“I welcome any conversation about this with anyone because I really do think that this space is maturing and what it needs is more sophisticated capital coming in,” Maxwell said.
