RFRSH Entertainment has raised an additional €10 million in investment following a funding round.
The round was led by existing investors Creandum and Sunstone, in addition to the Danish Growing Fund.
RFRSH Entertainment is the parent company of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament series BLAST Pro Series. This series is planning on expanding the brand by bringing competitions to three new locations in 2019: Sao Paulo, Brazil in March, Miami, USA in April, and Madrid, Spain in May.
Nikolaj Nyholm, CEO and Founder of RFRSH Entertainment discussed the investment in a statement: “We are creating the most interesting live tournament in esports and our ultimate ambition is to establish BLAST Pro Series as part of the mainstream scene of world class competitive entertainment on level with NBA, UFC, football, movies and online entertainment in general, Already now we have taken a pioneering role in creating the esports brand for the mainstream audience, and it is this position we seek to strengthen further.”
The company also owns Astralis, the team that currently holds the number one spot in the entire landscape of CS:GO. Winning six premier international tournaments this year alone, the brand is set to expand into the European League of Legends Championship Series (EU LCS).
Simon Schminke, Partner at Creandum added: “On a global scale, eSports is a massive market growing in unparalleled speed. With eSports becoming the number one entertainment category for today’s kids, we believe whoever becomes the dominating media company in this space will shape the industry globally. In RFRSH Entertainment we have found an extremely strong, professional and innovative organization with three founders in Nikolaj Nyholm, René Rechtman and Jakob Lund Kristensen capable of building such a dominating company. We are proud to keep backing RFRSH Entertainment on the company’s path to success.”
It was reported in October that the Danish organisation had been accepted as a franchise partner with the newly-franchised league. Its application was headlined by Danish colour castrer Martin “Deficio” Lynge, who has been rumoured to be joining the team from 2019.
RFRSH Entertainment also operates Heroic, another CS:GO squad. The team currently sits at 19th in HLTV.org’s rankings, which uses a point system informed by recent performances to dictate where teams currently rank in the world.
Esports Insider says: RFRSH Entertainment obviously has big plans, and a major investment such as this will definitely help with executing them. From expanding BLAST Pro Series’ footprint to entering League of Legends, there are plenty of things on the way from the Danish company.