PowerSpike will represent the University at the inaugural Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) InVenture Prize Competition Apr. 5-6 at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A “Shark Tank”-style pitch competition where a team of undergraduates representing each ACC university pitches inventions or businesses before a live audience and panel of judges, the InVenture competition carries with it prizes worth $30,000. PowerSpike will compete in the preliminary round April 5, and if successful, will participate in the finals, which will be broadcast live on television and streamed online April 6.
Angelo Damiano, team leader of PowerSpike
The PowerSpike team is led by Angelo Damiano, a junior at the Whitman School of Management. It connects gaming influencers, eSports organizations and eSports teams with brands. Statistics indicate that in 2015, online video game tournaments, otherwise known as “eSports,” got more views than the Masters, NBA finals, World Series and Stanley Cup. These tournaments, as well as other individual live streamers, have built their fan following on an online video game livestreaming service called Twitch.tv. While Twitch gets a massive amount of viewership collectively, tens of thousands of people stream on the site every day, and the viewership is spread across thousands of unique, individual channels, making it difficult to sponsor streamers as a brand, or to get sponsored by a brand as a streamer.
“At PowerSpike, we’ve developed an innovative solution to help make full-time streaming financially feasible. We help brands create integrated in-stream campaigns, which turn streamers into digital sellers without having to negotiate out contracts with thousands of individual channels one on one,” says Damiano. “Our technology allows streamers or eSports organizations to easily find brands willing to sponsor them in an open marketplace, and monitor their channel analytics in one convenient dashboard. We enable brands to find streamers/eSports organizations which best fit their campaigns, and effortlessly monitor their total outreach in seconds. Here at PowerSpike, we’re creating the next generation of online branding.”
The finals take place on April 6 beginning at 8 p.m. EST and will be broadcast live at http://www.gpb.org/acc-inventure-2016 or on WCNY, Syracuse’s public television station.
