Plays.tv, which launched in 2015, is a platform that lets gamers record, replay and relive their games. Its focus is to provide a video-based replay platform that doesn’t break after every patch and make it easy for professional players to review matches, analyze their gameplay, and share highlights with their communities.

Unlike other game capture utilities, you don’t have to hit any buttons when using Plays.tv with a game, and there are special features that work with top eSports titles such as League of Legends, Dota 2, Rocket League, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Overwatch with more added each month. The game capture tool automatically records entire game sessions, then breaks them up by each match. The videos also show key information, such as the champions selected for each match, the kill/death/assist ratio and whether the player won or lost. Additionally, the Plays.tv platform creates a visual annotated timeline of the match, marking all the key moments of the game. Those moments are automatically edited and tagged by the system, saving users a ton of time and work.

Dennis Fong, CEO and founder of Plays.tv
Dennis Fong, CEO and founder of Plays.tv

“For us, context is everything,” Dennis Fong, CEO and founder of Plays.tv, told [a]listdaily. The easy-to-use gameplay highlights tool is one of the main reasons why the platform is so popular among professional eSports players.

“It’s not just about video sharing,” explained Fong. “It’s about the fact that you can go back and replay the moments that you want to relive either for self-analysis or for sharing.” Although users can choose to put the videos on platforms such as YouTube, “Plays.tv is a full 360 ecosystem,” he continued. “In our ecosystem, there are millions of people that are finding creators and sharing clips of people that they follow. We proactively recommend clips to people based on their gaming habits.” The more Plays.tv learns about you, your rank, preferred characters, and how you play, the better it can connect you with the content that best suits your tastes.

Last week, Plays.tv announced that it secured $15 million in Series A funding. Financing was led by Shasta Ventures with investors that include the San Francisco 49ers and basketball star Jeremy Lin, in addition to Accel Partners, Tenaya Capital, DAG Ventures and Founders Fund. The company also announced a partnership in December to have its video replay functions integrated into the tournament platform, FaceIt. Fong goes in-depth with [a]listdaily about how eSports played a key role in the incredible growth and success of Plays.tv.

What is the goal of Plays.tv?

Plays.tv is about helping people tell a story about the games that they’ve played and allowing others to relive it with them. As opposed to coming out of a game with three random clips in your folder, with us, you see the timeline for your entire game with bookmarks, giving you a sense of the story arc. To create a highlight reel, you just select the clips, and we will stitch them into one for you.

How did the partnership with FaceIt come together last December?

FaceIt is the top tournament competition platform, used by a lot of pros and skilled, hardcore players. I think they heard from their community that a lot of people were using Plays.tv. We also saw the same thing, with people using #FaceIt on Plays.tv. So, the partnership kind of came naturally through both of our communities.

FaceIt has thousands of matches happening every day, but the only way to relive what happened in these matches was through stats, so they wanted video highlights from the point-of-view of the players. So, we connected and found a way to link FaceIt with a Plays.tv account so that videos are associated with specific matches, and those videos will appear on the match results page or the user’s profile page.

What will the $15 million investment allow you to do?

Well, Plays.tv is essentially a brand-new company. So, we have to pay for the staff and hosting all these videos. [The funding] also speeds up the pace of innovation. We’ve got a bunch of new tools and features that are coming out soon. It’s really about expansion. We have a lot of people who are using our platform already (it’s in the double-digit millions), and we want to continue building it out.

How did you get the word out about the platform to get such rapid growth?

It’s all been organic. We haven’t spent any money acquiring users. I would say that probably the biggest impact for us was the pro gaming eSports stars discovering it and using it as a tool to replay and analyze their game. Our replay tool is considered widely as the best one in the world. It’s even better than the in-game replay tools, which many games don’t have, and replays are available right after the match—you don’t have to do anything special. Because of those reasons, all the top pro teams—Team SoloMid (TSM), Cloud9, Team Liquid, Fnatic etc.—use Plays.tv as an indispensable tool as a way for them to improve.

It is also a video sharing tool, and these guys have massive audiences and fan bases. So, they started sharing their epic moments on Plays.tv and reposted them on Twitter and Facebook, in addition to using it on stream. Someone from TSM, with 40 to 50 thousand concurrent viewers, would use the tool to review his performance after a game before starting the next match. Viewers then asked about the tool.

That’s what got the ball rolling for us and was largely how we built our initial traction. There’s nobody that does what we do from the replay perspective.

How did Jeremy Lin and the San Francisco 49ers become involved with the funding?

Working with Jeremy Lin will be a tremendous opportunity for Plays.tv. As a gamer, professional athlete and an investor, he will provide unique insight to help us shape our platform. He’s a professional athlete with tremendous talent and work ethic, a gamer, and an experienced investor who can help us in many ways, including advising us as we expand our service in Asian markets. We sought out investors who understood our vision for the company and who could help us succeed through their insight, relationships, and expertise, which is why our relationships with Jeremy Lin, the 49ers organization and TSM will be so important moving forward.

We were introduced to the 49ers and Jeremy Lin through personal connections. The 49ers give us access to one of the most successful sports organizations in the world, and I’m sure this will help as the lines between eSports and traditional sports continue to blur.

How would you say investments from traditional sports helps validate and grow the world of eSports?

The top athletes and sports organizations in the world see the level of competition and dedication that pro gamers have to be the best. They also see the massive audiences that attend eSports events and watch online. Given the similarities between the two worlds, the investments we see from traditional sports and athletes is tremendous validation.