Reykjavik-based startup the Esports Coaching Academy has closed a $750K in a pre-seed round led by Swedish VC firm Behold Ventures with participation from Finnish Sisu Game Ventures and Icelandic VC firm MGMT Ventures. ECA enables anyone to run successful and profitable youth esports programs that kids and parents love. The funding will be used to enhance the platform.
ECA is developing a software platform that gives anyone the tools, resources and knowledge needed to start running youth esports programs in multiple titles that focus on physical and social skills as well as in-game prowess.
Since 2018, Ólafur Steinarsson, ECA’s co-founder, has been pivotal in building a sustainable, grassroots-led esports environment in Iceland. From the beginning, the focus has been on qualified coaches working with children in a productive way to enhance all the skills needed to excel in esports. Today, over 3% of children in the country pay one of the number of clubs running these programs to train regularly, in person with a coach and a group of peers.
“With the Esports Coaching Academy, we’re bringing the same methodology and programming to the rest of the world. We allow anyone to easily and quickly start running professional youth esports programs that are profitable and sustainable” says Ólafur Steinarsson.
The software solution consists of an educational hub and a SaaS solution serving exercises and complete programming for esports clubs and coaches.
At the educational hub, prospective coaches go through a course where they learn both the fundamentals of being a good coach and the specifics of being an esports coach. This means learning about working with children at different age brackets, how they develop skills and improve as well as focusing on the specifics of being an esports coach, i.e. how are games broken down into coachable elements and what are the focus areas needed to succeed. After passing, these coaches become ECA Certified Coaches and have access to additional educational courses focusing on specific game titles as well as topics such as “Exercise in esports” and “nutrition in esports”.
In order to efficiently run and sustain an esports program the ECA platform offers coaches access to a constantly updated library of programming consisting of game-specific and agnostic exercises, physical exercises, socialization games and more. The platform also offers ready-to-run courses filled with activities that are proven to benefit and engage players.
Currently, ECA has launched its solution with pilot partners in the US as well as signed agreements with partners in Puerto Rico, and Iceland with more agreements soon to be announced.
“We’re extremely excited to support ECA on their journey to power healthy and sustainable grassroots operations and infrastructure. We’ve been impressed by the team and share their vision that the next generation of esports athletes needs an inclusive and supportive environment to grow and develop future talent.” says Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir.
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