Gamblit Gaming raises more from investors, plans game for tournament play

Gamblit Gaming, the maker of skilled-based gaming machines, said it raised another $25 million from investors weeks after installing its first machines on the Strip.

The California-based company said the money will be spent on machine production and commercialization, without giving further details. This is at least the third-round of capital fund raising for the young company.

Gamblit last month became the first company to install skills-based games on the Strip when it placed two ModelG machines at Planet Hollywood. It has since placed its games at Level Up in the MGM Grand, Caesars Palace, Paris Las Vegas, The Linq Hotel and in Harrah’s Resort Southern California.

“Player engagement has been very strong,” Eric Meyerhofer, Chief Executive Officer of Gamblit Gaming, said in a statement this week, without giving any revenue figures.

Investors are betting that the next generation of casino visitors, raised on video games, will drive demand for skills-based gaming machines. More people watch gaming video content than HBO, Netflix, ESPN and Hulu combined, according to a new report last month by SuperData Research.

GameCo, another skills-based maker, is seeking to raise as much as $30 million from investors this year in its third-round of funding.

Tournament Play

Gamblit expects to increase its presence on Las Vegas casino floors in the second half of this year with the installation of console-based games that permit tournament play.

Gamblit, which calls its console-based machines G-Sports, will launch with “Road Redemption,” a game that requires players to defeat rival biker gangs in post-apocalyptic America, said Marcus Yoder, vice president of regulated markets business development at Gamblit.

The company has “signed agreements in place for all our products shown at G2E 2016,” Yoder said, without giving more detail on which casinos would take the new games. “Road Redemption” was shown at G2E.

Casinos would be able to hold tournaments with the G-Sport machines by setting a player fee and paying out the accumulated prize money to the top gamers at the end of a specific time span, such as a few hours or a day, Yoder said.

The scores of top players would be visible on a leaderboard above the game screen. Thus, gamers could be enticed to drop more money if they see they are within reach of the prize money, said Yoder. The casino would take a certain percentage of the fee for hosting the games.

The company plans to distribute similar machines without consoles, called TriStations, in the third quarter of 2017, Yoder said. Those machines, which are operated by touch screen, could also be used for tournament play.

Contact Todd Prince at tprince@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0386. Follow @toddprincetv on Twitter.