Mentioned in this article Games: League of Legends

A new social platform looking to build on how viewers experience esports competitions has raised $1.75 million.

Taunt is a new platform looking to enhance the viewing experience for esports spectators. The startup has now announced the completion of its seed financing round, enabling it to begin building on the company’s vision in earnest.

Ben Gilbert, Interim CEO for Taunt, gave a statement on proposed value of Taunt:

“We’re looking to make watching esports a much richer experience. The status quo today is an unreadable river of chat messages and message boards. The fans deserve a real social layer with competition, reputation, and statistics to engage around the game.”

Taunt’s challenge will be in convincing esports fans to break from existing habits in consuming esports content purely through online streaming platforms like Twitch. Taunt won’t be the first company to try tacking new and diverse features onto that experience through their own service. The company will be debuting an alpha version of its product to interested early adopters for use during the upcoming League of Legends World Championship.

Taunt’s origins lie at Pioneer Square Labs, a “startup studio” based in Seattle. Taunt is the fifth startup to launch via Pioneer Square Labs, and three PSL founders directly participated in Taunt’s seed round.

Those investors include Mike Galgon, Managing Director for PSL, who expressed optimism in his own statement:

“Esports will dwarf traditional sports in global viewership. A competitive social fabric like Taunt will be foundational to this growth as it electrifies the game experience for experts while also providing an on-ramp to esports for new fans. And, importantly, it connects all of these fans in a single experience.”

The seed round was led by venture capitalist firm Foundry Group, whose focus is on early-stage technology startups. Vulcan Capital and other unnamed angel investors also participated in the round.