Esk seed funding to adapt screen IP for touring with in-house AV
This article covers Esk, an AR/VR startup, which has raised £2.6m in a seed funding round led by Maven Capital Partners with participation from the British Business Bank’s Investment Fund for Scotland. The funds will be used to scale the startup's business of licensing film and TV intellectual property into live, venue-based entertainment, supporting promoters and venues and enabling international touring.
Esk, an AR/VR startup, has raised £2.6 million in a seed funding round led by Maven Capital Partners with participation from the British Business Bank’s Investment Fund for Scotland. The cash will be used to scale the company’s business of licensing film and TV intellectual property and turning it into live, venue-based entertainment — a model that aims to tap existing fan communities and grow international touring.
Why it matters
Live events built around familiar franchises are attracting attention from promoters and venues because they can convert existing audiences into ticket sales more predictably than untested shows. Esk’s deals with rights holders such as Netflix, Paramount and BAFTA give promoters ready-made intellectual property to market, while public backing from the British Business Bank signals continued UK support for technology-enabled creative businesses.
The funding also reflects investor appetite for businesses that blend content, hardware and software to create repeatable production models that can be exported overseas.
Inside the product
Esk produces live performances for medium to large venues using a proprietary media control system the team developed in-house after finding existing solutions unreliable. The system combines bespoke hardware and software to deliver synchronisation and audio-visual playback that the company says is designed for the demands of touring and live cinema-orchestra hybrids.
Since launching in 2022, Esk has delivered more than 550 shows worldwide. Notable productions include Top Gun: Maverick - Live in Concert, OCEAN In Concert narrated by David Attenborough, Netflix’s Life on Our Planet - In Concert and Quentin Blake’s Mrs Armitage On Wheels - Live On Stage. Each example demonstrates a different route to audience engagement: film concerts that pair live orchestras with screenings, nature documentaries reimagined for live narration and family theatre based on a well-known author. A recent partnership with BAFTA and Nibbs Events adapted BAFTA’s Games in Concert into a live orchestral performance, showing the company works across screen, documentary and games IP.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Maven Capital Partners, with participation from the British Business Bank through its Investment Fund for Scotland. Maven is positioned as the lead growth investor supporting Esk’s international scaling plans, while the Investment Fund for Scotland provides public equity aimed at helping ambitious Scottish businesses access growth capital.
In the announcement, Jamie Warner, Investor at Maven Capital Partners, said:
Esk's significant experience delivering highly acclaimed live entertainment experiences across the globe has attracted an impressive base of customers and IP creators and has allowed the business to rapidly grow. We are very much looking forward to supporting the Esk team scale this exciting business.
In the announcement, Sarah Newbould, Investor at British Business Bank, said:
This investment demonstrates the role the Investment Fund for Scotland plays in backing highgrowth, innovative businesses, helping them access the funding they need to scale, invest in new technology and compete globally. Esk exemplifies the type of ambitious company IFS was established to support, and we look forward to seeing how this investment contributes to its next stage of growth.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Sam Weatherstone, CEO at Esk, said:
We started Esk with a deep appreciation of live performance and immersive experiences, and a recognition that audiences have a huge appetite for in person, communal ways to enjoy the stories, creators and worlds they love – and to discover new ones. This investment from Maven and the British Business Bank is a massive vote of confidence in the company and our approach, and we look forward to building out our capabilities even further with their support.
Weatherstone frames the funding as validation of Esk’s approach: pairing licensed IP with engineering to solve the technical challenges of staging complex audiovisual shows.
The bigger picture
Esk’s raise is part of a wider move towards immersive and franchise-based live entertainment, where promoters prefer formats with built-in audiences. For the UK market, that trend intersects with the country’s strength in film, TV and live music and with public investment mechanisms that aim to help creative-technology firms scale.
For AR/VR and immersive content companies, the key test will be repeatability: whether productions can be reliably staged across markets and venues while protecting rights-holder relationships and margins. The involvement of both a private lead investor and a public fund underlines how mixed capital sources are being used to convert creative IP into exportable live formats.
This deal highlights how UK creative-technology businesses can attract a mix of commercial and public finance to expand internationally, and it will be one to watch for signs of wider export momentum from the country’s live entertainment and immersive sectors.
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