Skillz, an up-and-coming esports monetization platform currently based in San Francisco, has announced that it is relocating its headquarters to southwest Las Vegas, marking an increased shift toward real money gaming for the company.
According to founder and CEO Andrew Paradise, the company already has a smaller, existing office in the city, but it will now relocate its California staff as well. The new, 36,000-square-foot office is expected to house over 200 employees.
“(Las Vegas) just became the obvious place, both because of the history of real money gaming here and then, also, how many employees are already here and its proximity to our other offices, which are in California,” Paradise told the Las Vegas Sun.
“Real money gaming and Vegas have this really long tradition — history — in the United States. We’re a U.S.-based company. Most of our player base is actually in the U.S. So, we’re over 90 percent U.S. players. And we just see this huge opportunity to help Vegas move into this next era of real money games.”
According to the company, Skillz “empowers game developers to monetize their content by building multi-million dollar franchises and enabling social competition in their games.” Its monthly user count is estimated to be approximately 1.1 million.
Orit Peleg, vice president of brand and insights for Skillz, told the Sun that the platform is similar to Airbnb in that it allows developers to further profit from their existing assets.
“It feels really great knowing that, not only are we helping little studios that would never have had a chance to make money from their art and actually be able to connect with millions of players, but on the other side, allowing millions of players to actually connect with each other and to even earn a living,” Peleg told the Sun.
Paradise told the Sun that Las Vegas has become an “adult Disneyland,” and pondered the future intersection of casino gaming and digital experiences.
“Certainly, for people like me, video games are a much more meaningful art medium than what exists today in the casino,” he said. “It’s something that I actually really like engaging with. It’s something that I would engage with even without real world prizes and real money gaming.”
