Gamesville.com, Inc., the free online bingo site that's been "wasting your time since 1996," recently announced that it has received over $14 million in its first round of venture capital financing. Flatiron Partners was the lead investor and they were joined by SOFTBANK Technology Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and General Catalyst Internet Partners.
"Online game shows are poised to become the first application that truly integrates television with the Internet and Gamesville.com has positioned itself to be the leader in this integration," said Brian Bedol, managing director for General Catalyst Internet Partners.
Over 1.4 million registered users visit Gamesville.com to play real-time, multi-player game shows and win prizes for free. Popular game shows include The Bingo Zone(R), Picturama(TM), AceyDeucey(TM),
PopQuiz(TM), CatchUp CoverAll(TM) and SportsMadness(TM). Gamesville.com also offers a bi-weekly online magazine that can be delivered via e-mail and a chat room.
"The online game show space is red hot, and with this round of funding, Gamesville.com will continue to lead this marketplace," said Steve Kane, CEO of Gamesville.com. "We will use the funding to aggressively market Gamesville.com and rapidly expand our audience, client base and product offerings."
Named by Media Metrix in the Wall Street Journal as the "stickiest" site on the Internet, Gamesville.com has been chosen by brand name advertisers such as Virgin Atlantic, eBay, J.C. Penney, Rolling Stone Magazine and SmithKline Beecham. Because of these advertisements, Gamesville.com offers all its services for free.
As part of the investment, Gamesville.com has also added Managing Partner Jerry Colonna of Flatiron Partners, General Partner Charley Lax of SOFTBANK Technology Ventures and Managing Directors Brian Bedol and David Fialkow of General Catalyst Internet Partners to its Board of Directors. These individuals are joining David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, who was previously announced to the board.
"Gamesville.com has a staggering amount of traffic on their Web site and our experience with companies who also have tremendous traffic on their sites, such as GeoCities and Yahoo!, enables us to help Gamesville.com maximize the value of their visitors and find new ways to entice people to join." said Charley Lax, general partner at SOFTBANK Technology Ventures.
"Gamesville.com will certainly be a fun company to watch," said Dan Nova, general partner at Highland Capital Partners.