The company was founded in 2012 when CEO Michael Williams changed course from a previous project surrounding digital currency for games to software for tournament organization. With support from Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, the cofounders rounded up investment support from various sources, including SOSventures, Private Capital Network, and Paua Ventures. In 2013, the business was incorporated and they launched their livestreaming site Oomba.tv with deals to host Supercross, Speed Golfing, and Boxing footage. Oomba announced they have partnered with Mayfair Games and Cryptozoic Entertainment and will launch their platform during Gen Con 2014. They will be using their software to run several Mayfair and Cryptozoic tournaments, as well as make an official record attempt at the Guinness World Record for largest tournament of Rock, Paper, Scissors while there. On August 17, 2014 Oomba set the record at 2,950 participants. The website was launched into private beta at the end of Gen Con. In 2017, Oomba's TV production arm, OombaTV launched a national tournament series, Unrivaled, with over 250 participating stores and culminating in a Grand Finals in Las Vegas on October 27 – 29 The tournament featured 6 games:
The broadcast was live streamed to the company's website and was available for viewing on Youtube In October of 2017, the company acquired Chatsworth-based GameWorks Entertainment LLC, an entertainment and gaming venues company for $17M. This was done with a $25M loan from ExWorks Capital, a chicago-based lending firm In June of 2018, Michael Williams and Nolan Bushnell left Oomba and ExWorks Capital took ownership of GameWorks.
Products
Oomba is creating a mobile app and website to serve three major functions: tournament organization, webcasting, and social networking. The software records permanent results of events participated in, and allows users to create multiple identities or profiles to engage with different groups and/or games separately. The software will automatically organize tournaments for any game a user inputs rules for, and can serve as a platform for broadcasting live web streams of any event using it. Access to these streams can be found via their oomba.tv component.
