Berlin’s cluster of promising social game companies is growing.  Crowdpark, a social game developer focused on social betting games, today announced it has secured approximately $6 million (€4 million) in new equity funding from European investors Target Partners and existing investor Earlybird Venture Capital. With the $2 million Crowdpark had secured previously, the total funding received accumulates to $8 million. Crowdpark has been in the focus of interest this summer after being picked as a positive example in the widely discussed „anti-copy-cat-revolution“ , started by Berlin startup 6wunderkinder.

Crowdpark brings a new genre of games to social gaming: social betting.  The company’s new betting model allows users to compete against each other in betting events, using virtual currency.  The founders of Crowdpark, Martin Frindt, Ingo Hinterding and Christoph Jenke, come from an analytic and forecasting  background and decided to pioneer social betting in 2009.  Crowdpark applies its patented “dynamic betting” technology that enables forecasts in social gaming in real-time similar to how people play the stock market. The product offers players the opportunity to bet on real life events in sports, entertainment, news, technology and other topics. As there is no real money payout, the concept is absolutely legal.

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Social Bets Reflect Current Events
Bets include questions about the future on topics ranging from current events in sports (‘Primera División: FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid’) and politics (‘Obama’s approval rating 19th October’) to technology and entertainment/gossip (‘Will Prince Harry marry Pippa?’). Updated weekly, the Crowdpark Social Betting Index reveals more insights on the top-trending bets.  “Crowdpark is defining an entirely new genre of social betting games based on actual events,” said Ingo Hinterding, co-founder and chief product officer for Crowdpark.  “Two of Europe’s leading VC firms – Target Partners and Earlybird – share our vision.  We aim to extend our growth and build amazing games based on our dynamic betting technology, and in other hot growth categories such as casino games.”

Especially Earlybird increases their involvment in games. The VC invested in Scoreloop and sold it successfully to RIM this year. Earlybird also invested in Turkish social gaming company Peak Games earlier this year.  “We invested in Crowdpark because we liked the idea of bringing betting to the social arena and thus tapping into three huge markets – where social and mobile gaming meet online betting,” said Dr. Christian Nagel, co-founder and managing partner at Earlybird.

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Location Berlin as Central Role
The funding will be used to enhance the technology, develop cross-platform, create new games and hire more talent in game design and development. With Crowdpark’s base in Berlin, the company benefits from being at the nexus of Europe’s Silicon Valley and its digital entertainment and creative gaming hub.  The city boasts more than 130 game developers, service providers, and publishers – the perfect ecosystem to further attract gaming talent.

Expansion into Untapped Markets
Crowdpark will offer several betting and casino products for multiple social platforms including Facebook, the web and mobile applications (iOS and Android). The first product, Bet Tycoon, currently has around half a million monthly active users (MAU) and is the most popular betting game on Facebook.  Players choose from a variety of answer options, and can bet with virtual money. The real-time nature of the game  means players can change their bet at anytime, as the events or news unfold. Crowdpark’s significant market opportunity reaches across the large online betting market ($24 billion), social gaming market ($4 billion) and mobile gaming market ($8 billion) (source: Digi-Capital)