Team SoloMid parent company Swift has acquired the software and branding for the Blitz Esports desktop app, an analytics platform focused on League of Legends player development, the company told ESPN on Friday.
The acquisition occurred in November for a multi-million dollar sum, sources familiar with the deal said. With the move, Swift will continue to service and develop the app, which launched in beta in June.
In a separate November move, Blitz announced it reached terms with Discord that would see the majority of Blitz's staffers move to work on Discord products, which include a voice chat platform and an in-client video game store. With both the Discord and Swift deals, multiple Blitz staffers who focused on media content were laid off.
The Blitz brand and its work on the app will continue under Swift, according to Swift chairman and SoloMid founder Andy "Reginald" Dinh.
"If you look at our history, we're just basically going back to our roots," Dinh told ESPN. "If you look before TSM esports, I founded SoloMid Corporation as a blog with my brother Dan, which became SoloMid.net. It was written guides by Dan and I while we were in college. Since then, we've gotten better and have a much better team, but this has always been our focus. With the acquisition of Blitz, it really helps build our portfolio where we can leverage Blitz to help what we're doing on the esports side."
Dinh said he hopes to use the Blitz app to find potential future League of Legends pros. In late-November and early-December, Team SoloMid hosted an in-house Scouting Grounds competition that awarded two players for each role, regardless of region, the opportunity to fly to Los Angeles and bootcamp with TSM's pro League of Legends team. Dinh said SoloMid will use Blitz to help identify players for similar opportunities in the future.
The Blitz desktop app allows League of Legends players to track their match history, review suggested champion runes and item builds and provides both positive and negative feedback after the conclusion of games. The software is one of many that have been released within the past few years that work to improve players skill sets based off of game data. Dinh said that the app was an attractive product because of its ability to allow users to focus on their in-game mechanics, without worrying about extra hassle.
The acquisition will also help enhance features for ProBuilds and LoL Counter, two websites that offer similar services to Blitz and have been long-standing pieces of the SoloMid Corporation portfolio. Both ProBuilds and LoL Counter now sport a website header that encourages user to download and use the Blitz desktop app.
Swift was founded in December 2017 as SoloMid began to raise its first major investment round. In July, Swift completed a $37 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, a San Francisco and Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that had invested in Twitch prior to Amazon acquiring the popular livestreaming platform.
Other investors in that round included Golden State Warriors stars Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala, Indiana Pacers ownership heir Steve Simon, NFL Hall of Famer Steve Young and more.
Team SoloMid was founded in September 2009 by Dinh and has since become one of the most popular esports brands around the globe. It currently sponsors professional players in League of Legends, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Clash Royale, Rocket League, Super Smash Bros. and Hearthstone.