Cover story: Edwardsville’s Global Reach

EDWARDSVILLE — A nondescript Madison County office building packs a powerful one-two-three punch felt around the world.

Lineup Media Group (LMG) and Atomic 47 (A47) headquartered in Edwardsville are globally focused venture/growth holding companies with a portfolio of businesses. Operating under the same leadership, LMG and A47 are technically separate umbrellas.

“When we started this, we had three areas we wanted to be involved in: media, financial technology (fintech) and healthcare,” said Kris Lakin, of Edwardsville, one of LMG’s founders. “That was kind of what brought us all together.

“LMG is focused on the media side and A47 on financial technology and healthcare,” he said. “Like a producer in a movie, our goal is to combine strategy and vision with the best team, resources and relationships to create an effective ‘product,’ all while advancing a cohesive agenda for the entire group of companies.”

Both LMG and A47 grew from Eudora Global founded by Edwardsville entrepreneur Jeff Cooper more than a decade ago. Under his leadership as chief executive officer, what began as an incubator for completely online businesses has grown to include offices in New York, Mexico City, Ho Chi Minh City and Astana in Kazakhstan.

The group began as a startup for a single project: Ocho — Spanish for the number eight — the first completely licensed and regulated online casino in Mexico and Latin America.

From Ocho grew ancillary companies to support it, such as the fintech firm ePlata that uses smartphone and computer apps in connection to the online casino. Mexico, like much of the developing world, has a massive population of unbanked or underbanked citizens with no access to the digital economy. So the ePlata mobile digital payments system was developed.

“When we originally spun the group into what we’re doing now, we were working on the Ocho project,” said Lakin.

“We started all this as a hybrid startup accelerator, in some ways similar to incubators or private equity in that we’re taking internal resources, or we’re going out and raising money through traditional fundraising,” he said. “But it’s difficult to label because it truly is a unique model.”

LMG and A47 fund startups, early-stage and emerging companies deemed to have high-growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth, much like venture capital firms.

An example is Ultimate Gaming Championship (UGC), the esports company based in Edwardsville begun by Matt Jackson that joined under the LMG umbrella.

UGC has been highly successful and gone on to partner with leaders in the gaming world such as Microsoft and LG Electronics for esports offering millions of dollars in prize money.

Microsoft worked with UGC and LMG to produce, execute and distribute pro-circuit gaming tournaments in locales such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City, using UGC’s proprietary online esports platform that leverages tools such as artificial intelligence-based optical recognition technology to facilitate a turnkey tournament infrastructure.

Lakin said LMG’s infrastructure provides UGC with data and statistics features not offered by competitors.

“From the outside, the combination of media, fintech and healthcare may seem scattershot,” Lakin said. “But the sectors we chose were actually very intentional and the interconnectedness of the individual companies fosters a collaborative environment.

“Most of our companies are of our own making; we actually created the companies,” he noted. “UGC is one of only a few that was a standalone, independent business that we rolled into LMG through acquisition. Our model does not typically center around investing in, or acquiring, outside companies.

“But esports was a sector that we really wanted to get involved with, because its global-growth trajectory is off the charts,” Lakin said. “Yet, esports is also a very niche world.”

When UGC came to LMG several years ago, the esports startup already had an undeniable footprint in the esports’ space.

“We saw it as a great addition to LMG’s mission,” Lakin said.

Lakin said his association with Cooper goes back to when Lakin was 11 years old. Around 1993, when Cooper was in law school, he coached Lakin on the Granite City Steelers hockey team.

“So close to nine years ago, Jeff (Cooper) and a group of partners collaborated on a healthcare venture – CitizensRx, a pharmacy benefit management company similar to Express Scripts,” Lakin said. “CitizensRx had really grown. It exploded and thrived over the last eight or nine years.

“The partnership did the original investment, grew the company, then sold pieces of it over time — primarily to private equity and venture-capital-type entities,” he said. “That model really worked, and we wanted to replicate it in other sectors.”