Company: SKLZ
Filing Date: 2025-11-06
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001801661-25-000050
Chunk: 31

Company: Skillz Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-11-06
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 31
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 significant financial and marketing resources. Our competitors may also develop products, features and services that are similar to ours or that achieve greater market acceptance. Competitors may invest more heavily in product development, undertake extensive marketing, campaigns, adopt aggressive pricing or promotional strategies, and may create partnerships with developers, or otherwise achieve greater commercial success than we do, which could adversely impact our business. Advancements in artificial intelligence may further intensify competition, and our failure to effectively integrate AI into our products and operations could impair our ability to remain competitive and may reduce our market share. In addition, continuing consolidation in the entertainment and gaming industries may create larger and better-capitalized competitors with broader product offerings and geographic reach. If we are unable to maintain or grow our market share or keep our platform offerings popular with users, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be adversely affected.

We are subject to risks associated with competitors that do not follow ethical fairness practices to grow their businesses.

Consistent with our advertising, marketing and branding, each head-to-head match coordinated through our platform is between two real players. However, we believe some of our competitors, despite advertising and marketing to the contrary, deploy algorithmic competitors (“bots”) in games offered on their platforms such that real players are matched against bots instead of other real players. By matching bots against real players, we understand that competitors can engineer the outcome of such matches and make economic gains at the cost of players. As a result, these competitors may be able to build their businesses at a faster rate and with more cost efficiencies than we are able to, which hurts our competitive position amongst “fair play” skill-based gaming platform providers. 

We have worked, and will continue to work, towards helping to stop these dishonest practices. In February 2024, we and Big Run Studios, Inc. (“Big Run”) brought suit against AviaGames, Inc. (“AviaGames”) for false advertising, copyright infringement, and violations of California’s state unfair competition law in relation to AviaGames’ use of bots on its platform. We are currently involved in other ongoing litigation with other defendants in relation to similar claims related to bot misuse. In April 2024, we, Big Run and AviaGames’ entered into a settlement agreement that resolved the bot misuse litigation with respect to AviaGames, but there is no guarantee we will resolve our other ongoing bot misuse litigation on favorable terms. Additionally, although we intend to initiate additional actions to protect our company and players, our ability to bring claims related to bot