LeSports announced it secured $1.2B in Series B financing, bringing the company’s total investment to $1.35B. The cash infusion now values the LeEco unit at $3.3B, underscoring the company’s record growth and significantly increased value in a two-year span. LeSports, established on March 22, 2014, became independent from Letv.com and started distributing its businesses across the entire sports industry based on the unique value proposition of combining events operations, streaming content, and smart devices with Internet services. LeSports' Series B financing attracted more than 30 investors, including HNA Group. The company closed its $122.9M Series A financing in May '15 led by Wanda Group, along with Yunfeng Capital (backed by Alibaba Group) and seven other venture capital firms and individual investors completing the round (LeSports). FINANCE ASIA's Julie Zhu reported LeEco co-Founder & Vice Chair Liu Hong said, "We didn't plan to raise this much. We initially aimed for only 3 billion yuan ($460M). The market enthusiasm was too high and pushed up the scale to 5 billion yuan ($770M). But even that couldn't stop [investor demand]." With interest in sport, "not least football, seen taking off in China with the overt backing of the government," HNA Capital teamed up with two other HNA Group subsidiaries, Shenzhen-listed Caissa Travel and HNA Capital Investment (Beijing), to invest 1.2B yuan ($180M) in Le Sports. Liu said that a number of "big institutions and individual investors" continued to contact Le Sports, which has the exclusive rights to broadcast the FA Cup in China, "even after the passing of the Series-B funding deadline on March 11." He added, "I even received a call [from an investor] last night [when in Boao], saying he wants to invest. We are under a lot of pressure because it's about relationships. Many of them are strategic investors [of the whole LeEco group], not just financial investors." According to one person with "direct knowledge of the matter, other investors in the Series-B round of funding" include a wholly owned subsidiary of Aviation Industry Corp. of China, Citic Guoan Group, which is part of the state-owned Citic Group and owner of Beijing Guoan football club, and Ti'ao Power, a "little-known" Chinese firm backed by Chinese Media Capital. The person denied some Chinese media reports that Dalian Wanda Group, a lead investor in Le Sports' maiden fundraising round, "also participated in the Series-B round." The latest fundraising round "comes as capital flocks to tap China's underdeveloped sports industry," which accounted for just 0.64% of Chinese GDP in '14 and is "seen ripe for massive development." Le Sports has also acquired rights to stream Major League Baseball, Wimbledon tennis and the EPL. The company said that it has media rights to 310 sports events, including NBA basketball and Formula 1. Consulting firm iResearch said that Le Sports had 14 million unique visitors each day, representing 3% of China's online video users, as of October. The company posted unaudited income of 417M yuan ($64M) for the financial year ended in December (FINANCE ASIA, 3/27).
