As in-person concerts and shows return, the live streaming game continues to heat up. Live streaming startup Live Control has announced that it has closed out its Series A funding round with $30 million in funding. This announcement comes on the heels of funding announcements from fellow event live streaming companies Flymachine and Mandolin earlier this month.
The round was led by Coatue, with participation from existing investors First Round Capital, Box Group, Susa Ventures, and TriplePoint. LiveControl had previously raised $3.2 million during its seed round last August.
The company aims to give all different types of venues and content creators — even those without a high budget — access to high-quality video production and streaming. It does this through its innovative technology that allows its professional camera operators to remotely control onsite cameras.
The startup’s Co-Founder & CEO, Patrick Coyne, announced the funding via a blog post, in which he explains, “Even though many of the people that make up our core team have a background in traditional video production, we wanted to question everything. And the core question quickly became apparent: do we really need to be in person to produce high quality video? The answer: no! But not without rethinking many of the systems and practices that make up traditional video production and building software solutions.”
According to Coyne, it takes under an hour to set up LiveControl in a new venue. The venue or event organizer can then schedule an event through the system dashboard, and the system automatically starts and is manned by a remote camera operator at the time of the event to produce “multi-camera video in real time.”
Investment in virtual platforms and solutions has shown no signs of slowing down — whether for fan experiences or in the B2B space — and with so much uncertainty remaining around Covid restrictions and transmission risks, they will continue to be an important vehicle to connect audiences for the foreseeable future. Time will tell whether these options will remain popular as the world slowly returns to normal and in-person events hit their stride again.