An aerial view of New York City, where the Raine Group is headquartered. Credit: Patrick Tomasso
Raine Group has officially announced a $760+ million Partners IV fund that the New York City-based company plans to invest in “sports, media, entertainment and gaming” companies.
Raine Group leaders have officially announced the Partners IV fund – and plan to support the “growth phase”. TMT Company” – in a general press release today. With nearly $4 billion in assets under management, according to executives, Raine has previously invested in SoundCloud (which aims to make profits by the end of 2023), Lollapalooza producers C3 Presents, Rock the Bells and Amuse, to name a few.
And while time will tell which companies will achieve the tranche just described, Raine revealed that the Partners IV fund supported London-based Tripledot Studios, the developer of casual mobile games such as Woodoku And word hopon his first investment.
In a statement, Sherri Williams, a partner at Raine and head of investor relations and fundraising, expressed a desire to continue “investing in transformative growth companies.”
“We appreciate this vote of confidence from our limited partners and look forward to building on our firm’s strong track record of investing in transformative growth companies in our core sectors,” said JP Morgan and Rothschild veteran Williams. “We look forward to working with our investors and portfolio companies to realize their full potential.”
The announcement of Raine’s Partners IV comes approximately three weeks after ESH Acquisition Corp’s IPO. The Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) now has about $100 million and is targeting a possible takeover of the music industry.
Of course, the SPAC made it clear in the regulatory filings that it could consider buying from “concert halls, theaters, cinemas, record labels, music and television streaming services, production companies and publishers.” The company’s directors include Jonathan Gordon of 1916 Enterprises, while Edward Ackerley of Audiosocket has been hired as a consultant.
More investment and acquisition news in June (and the last days of May) brought the sale of Soundtrap (from Spotify and back to its founders), Arro Media and Aptone, to name a few, as Warner Music Group took a stake in Hungarian company Label Magneoton took over. (The IFPI relaunched in June advertise a court-ordered ban on certain Bittorrent sites in nearby Bulgaria.)
Meanwhile, music industry companies including Beyond Music, virtual concert platform VARK, artificial intelligence streaming service WAVs AI, Captions and “premium ticketing marketplace” Seat Unique announced multimillion-dollar increases this month.