Virtual world investment reaches $1bn
Virtual Worlds Management, organisers of the Virtual Worlds conference and expo and good friends of K Zero has recently published their findings on funding and financing in virtual worlds.
The full story is here. The excellent piece of research show that in the period Oct 2006 to Oct 2007, acquisitions in the sector totalled $810m and company funding raised $196m.
It also shows that although Second Life gets a lot of the attention, there’s other worlds in town.
The Disney purchase of Club Penguin was the largest single deal at $700m, followed by Intel’s deal to acquire graphics company Havoc for $110m.
The remaining deals, as shown below were spread across a wide range of companies, primarily from North America. This is a little surprising given the audience share (albeit just driven from Second Life residents) coming from Europe but nevertheless clearly demonstrates the strong continued growth in the virtual world sector.
