‘Fortnite’ Maker Epic Games Is Now Worth More Than Twice As Much As Major League Soccer

The coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on team sports around the world as stadium revenue has dried up. But the opposite has happened for video games.

Fortnite maker Epic Games is reportedly nearing a $750 million round at a valuation of about $17 billion, with investors including T. Rowe Price TROW , Baillie Gifford and previous Epic Games backer KKR KKR . Besides Fortnite, which has more than 350 million users, Epic Games is the creator of the Unreal Engine, a fundamental toolset for building many games (and, increasingly, making movies and TV).

To put that $17 billion valuation into perspective, in November we valued the entire National Hockey League at $21 billion and all of Major League Soccer at $7.5 billion. Epic Games is the creation of Tim Sweeney, who is worth $4.5 billion and owns more than 50% of Epic Games. Chinese tech giant Tencent, which bought a 48% stake for $330 million in 2012, is the largest outside investor.

According to Pitchbook, Epic Games, which also owns the social networking app Houseparty, held talks in April to raise between $500 million and $1 billion. In 2018, KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins and others bought a $1.25 billion stake in the company, according to reports. Epic Games also counts Disney and Endeavor among its backers.

There is heightened interest in the video game industry as more people look for ways to pass the time during stay-at-home orders. Over 12 million viewers tuned in for a concert by rapper Travis Scott that aired virtually in the Fortnite app. And recently, the app featured a trailer of the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie Tenet.

Zynga ZNGA  recently bought Turkish mobile game maker Peak Games for $1.8 billion, and in May, AppLovin bought mobile games provider Machine Zone.