State of Play Hospitality

State of Play Hospitality
Date: July 2022
Deal: Investment of $10m by Red Engine
About the client: State of Play Hospitality is a rapidly growing international operator of technology-enabled, premium experiential entertainment concepts. Since launching its first concept, Bounce, in London in 2012, State of Play has gone on to launch and operate several more industry leading experiential concepts in the USA and UK including AceBounce, Flight Club (operated under licence), and Hijingo.
About the transaction: The new funding builds upon State of Play’s initial raise of more than $35m from existing investors and Bregal Partners in March 2022.
Red Engine’s investment gives it a minority stake in State of Play and Steve Moore, co-founder and chief executive of Red Engine, will join the board as a non-executive director. Red Engine is the owner of the Flight Club brand which State of Play licences in North America. Akur acted as exclusive financial adviser to State of Play on the minority investment by Red Engine.
Lead: Simon Croft-Baker
Esports Entertainment Group

 
 

Chris Young…

Chris is focused on listed closed-ended funds, specialising in both equity and debt capital fundraising. He has over 16 years’ experience in both sales and research. With relationships across many of the large institutional investors in the sector, he has worked across IPOs, secondary fundraisings, placings and sales. He began his career in the City as an investment funds analyst at Credit Lyonnais in 1999, and has subsequently held positions at Lazard Panmure Gordon, Arbuthnot Securities, and most recently as a specialist salesman within the investment funds team at Westhouse Securities. He is focused on private and public real estate and REITs, infrastructure and utilities, emerging markets, private equity and alternatives. Tel: +44 (0) 20 3780 8746 Mob: +44 (0) 7471 141 303 Email: cyoung@akur.co.uk