If you’re looking for the next disruptive technology to invest in, then eSports could make for a solid investment opportunity.

Investing in this industry is growing exponentially with the growing audience for watching eSports and the rising number of successful games in the genre.

In March 2021 alone, about $4.06 billion of disclosed investment relating to eSports was reported, according to Esports Insider.

The vast majority of that money — about $4 billion — was used by Nuverse to acquire Moonton, the game developer behind Mobile Legends: Bang Bang — one of the most popular new eSports titles in the world.

Other significant investments include: Bitkraft Ventures, a worldwide esports venture capital firm, raised $165 million in August 2020 for investing in eSports, gaming, and interactive entertainment; the Mobile Premier League (MPL), Asia’s largest mobile gaming and esports platform, raised $90 million in September 2020; and VSPN, which uses content creation and organizes eSports tournaments, and has partnered with more than 70 percent of Chinese eSports tournaments, drew $100 million in funding in October 2020.

It’s clear that eSports will continue to grow as an industry. But should you invest in it? That’s always an impossible question to answer definitively, but many industry experts have grown more bullish on investing in this sector of the economy.

Over at The Motley Fool, one of the top investing sites, the prognosis is measured. The site’s investing experts noted that while the video game industry is “typically riskier than the market at large,” many companies have the potential for substantial long-term growth.

“Still, the gaming industry has a promising outlook, and a multitude of favorable trends benefit the industry’s leading participants,” The Motley Fool wrote. “Most top companies in the space have recorded heightened player engagement amid social distancing initiatives spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, and global demand for gaming and esports content will likely continue to rise long after the pandemic subsides.”

A Canadian investor in disruptive industries, Sheldon Inwentash, was recently interviewed on the subject of why his company, ThreeD Capital, has remained bullish on investing in the eSports industry.

“This isn’t something that’s a trade or is a short-term phenomenon,” Inwentash said to Agoracom. “We are in a secular, major transformation in technology. There’s been a shakeout and it shook a lot of people’s confidence.”

Inwentash said his company has a “rock solid” view of the future of disruptive technology, especially eSports.

“What’s interesting is that things are snowballing because of the visibility of some of our companies,” Inwentash said. “Our deal flow in the eSports arena has just catapulted. We’re seeing a lot of great projects.”

There are even signs that the industry is overtaking conventional sports.

The lockdowns caused by the pandemic dealt a devastating blow to traditional sports like football and basketball, while eSports continued to enjoy skyrocketing growth.

That was evidenced by the decision from Spain’s top football division to hire an eSports star with little experience in “real” sports as a commentator for its first actual football match to be shown live on Twitch – which usually only broadcasts eSports competitions.

That decision “was the latest sign that sports leagues are increasingly worried about losing the next generation of fans; they know that many kids today are more interested in professional gaming than football,” the UK’s Investor Chronicle wrote. “Although watching other people play computer games may not seem entertaining to most, there is a rapidly expanding market for esports.”

The eSports sector’s growth gained even more momentum during quarantine. Although even eSports tournaments have in the past taken place in stadiums filled with thousands of fans, there has been a seamless transition to streaming services like Twitch and YouTube.

The market share will likely shift back to real sports once the pandemic ends, Investor Chronicle reported.

“But as the younger generation comes of age, the sports establishment is likely to continue investing and fuelling growth in esports for years to come,” the article said.

Starting up a new business is a real learning curve. Inevitably, there will be some hiccups along the way, but many bumps in the road can be avoided or reduced by using the help of a dedicated business accountant.

While a good business accountant can offer support to resolve problems as they arise, it can often be far more cost-effective to avoid wasting money now and in the future by using cost accounting to deeply analyse your business costs and highlight financial inefficiencies.

MW Technical Operations offers cost accounting services to local businesses in and around Bristol that work like management accounting to accurately capture your business costs of production, which includes a detailed analysis of all variable and fixed costs of your production processes.

Cost accounting goes much deeper than regular business accounting and the information it generates can be used internally by your management to make better business decisions.

What is the difference between accounting and cost accounting?

We are often asked what the difference is between regular business accounting and cost accounting. Unlike financial accounting that delivers information that you can submit to HMRC and for calculating your tax, cost accounting details the finer costs of your business practices and allows you to understand where your company is spending money, as well as how much and when.

There is great flexibility with cost accounting because it doesn’t need to stick to any set standards and can be used to deliver results in a variety of ways, such as using standard costing, activity-based costing, lean accounting, and marginal costing.

Which style of cost accounting you use will depend on the nature of your business and whether you manufacture or sell products, or your business delivers services that also use consumables and generates overheads that can be costed.

Because cost accounting considers all input costs, including both variable and fixed costs, you can use the results to look for areas of wastage or inefficiencies that are not uncovered with regular business accounting.

Saving you time and money

As your business grows, you will consider taking on more staff, which will add to your payroll and take up more of your precious management time. Running a busy company requires a lot of time and effort, so some of the less productive tasks can get pushed to one side in favour of the essential tasks that generate a profit.

However, your business processes can become stuck in a rut and poor financial decisions set in and become a normal practice. There isn’t enough time for business owners to dedicate to looking at the details of their business structure and methods to see where savings can be made.

This can often mean a company paying over the odds for the raw materials they need from the same supplier, even when the marketplace may have become more competitive and there are better buying solutions that can be taken advantage of.

But without having access to the finer information that cost accounting can provide, most bosses will never know they could be saving money and making more cost efficiencies.

If you want to find out more about cost accounting or the other services we provide, do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Banks and insurance agencies are usually the sources for investors for financing. However, this can at times be a tedious process that requires a lot of waiting time and documentation.

Private money lending is a good substitute for this, especially in the fast-paced real estate industry. Both an individual and a corporation can look into private money lenders instead of larger financial institutions to hasten the process of locking a deal.

A private money loan, essentially, is capital that is offered to an individual, investor, or to a business by a: 

• a private organisation, which is similar to typical financial institutions, but is not attached to banks, and therefore requires fewer qualifications from the borrower;
• Private individual, who may be someone the borrower knows or someone who is part of the real estate financing industry. Just like many investments, private individuals release the money with the hope to profit from the returns.

Borrowers either work in real estate or are ordinary individuals seeking to invest in it. Borrowers may opt for loans to sell, rent, build or renovate a property.

Private money lenders are usually found within the local area of the borrower and are more likely to invest not just money, but their interest in the property and ensuring its success. Being hyper-local, they are more aware of the trends happening as well as the competition that might surround the property.

Unlike typical financial institutions, private money lenders can offer as little as a promissory note, or an agreement can be made through a deed of trust. Written in this document would be the loan amount, payment terms, interest rate, and whatnot. The property is mortgaged to the lender as a collateral until the borrower completes their payment. 

To ensure transparency before finalising a deal with their borrowers, private money lenders look into three aspects:

• Credit score. The credit score will let private money lenders know if the borrower is timely in paying their debts.
• Pricing. The lender makes sure that the loan amount is within a competitive range.
• Exit Strategy. The lender looks into when and how the borrower must pay back the loan.

On the other hand, before choosing a private money lender, a borrower can look into: 

• Making sure the lender has money that is available and was secured legally. The last thing a borrower would want is a loan not coming through right when they are in the middle of finishing the renovation of a rental space or in the final stages of building a house.
• Looking into the lender’s experience in the field. How much they know about real estate, financing, and even the locality of the property will be very helpful before locking figures.

But for as long as both the lender and the borrower are secure in their agreement, private money lending is an appealing option for both parties. Negotiations for easy payment schemes can be made between the private money lenders and the borrowers, and deals can be made in just one day.