Kent Wakeford

Kent Wakeford is Chief Operating Officer for Kabam, the leader in the western world for free-to-play core games. Kent joined Kabam full-time in February 2011 after serving as a company advisor since February 2009. He has been instrumental in shaping the company’s game portfolio, adding talented development teams, and navigating all legal areas for the company. Currently, he is responsible for the legal department, mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and governance, partnerships for third party game development, and licensed intellectual property.

Kent has sourced and structured Kabam’s relationships with Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for The Hobbit mobile and web games, and NBCUniversal for the Fast & Furious 6 mobile game. Kent facilitated Kabam’s acquisitions of Gravity Bear, Fearless Studios, WonderHill, Wild Shadow Studios, Balanced Worlds, and Exploding Barrel Games. In addition, he assisted in raising more than $100 million in capital investments for Kabam from venture and strategic investors including Google Ventures, SK Telecom, Pinnacle Ventures, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Canaan Partners, Intel Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Kent also played an integral role in Alibaba’s $120 million investment in Kabam, which increased the company’s valuation to more than $1 billion.

Kent began his digital career at Netscape and spent more than five years at AOL as a Vice President, facilitating more than 250 partnerships across AOL web properties as well as Time Inc., Turner, and Warner Bros. Prior to joining Kabam, he was SVP at AddThis social sharing platform and co-founded the media valuation and ad verification company Integral Ad Science. Kent began his career as a corporate attorney at O’Melveny & Myers representing movie studios, record labels, and media companies.

Kent graduated order of the coif from University of Southern California Law School, achieving awards for highest scholarship and excellence in the field of entertainment law, and participated on Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree cum laude from University of California, Los Angeles.