New York, 26th July 2023 - ScorePlay has raised a $5M seed round, led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, bringing their total funding to $6.5M. They provide sports organizations worldwide with an AI-powered media infrastructure as teams and athletes alike enter a new era of fan content consumption.
Athlete and tech investors
Following in the footsteps of Eintracht Frankfurt’s Mario Götze (with Companion-M), NBA All-Star Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s 35V invested alongside Manchester United’s Raphaël Varane and Philadelphia Union’s Alejandro Bedoya as they also saw ScorePlay’s potential within soccer and entered the round. 2020 US Open Champion Dominic Thiem and West Ham United's Nayef Aguerd also joined the round to close out the athlete backing.
"ScorePlay is not just playing the game but changing how the game is seen, especially at a time when storytelling has become the centrepiece of sports. This goes beyond the court and field, and enables a whole new narrative platform for sports organisations and athletes. I’m happy to be on board, and even happier that Angel City was one of the first teams to see the potential." Alexis Ohanian, Founding Partner 776.
On the tech spectrum, entering alongside Alexis Ohanian and Seven Seven Six, are Renaud Visage, co-founder of Eventbrite, the largest event technology company, and Alex Yazdi, co-founder and CEO of Voodoo, the French mobile game unicorn. Finally, to guide them in the SaaS and creator economy, they received investment from several founders of Jellysmack (Michael Philippe, Robin Sabban), as well as the three co-founders of Hexa Thibaud Elzière, Quentin Nickmans and Amaury Sepulchre (eFounders), the best European startup studio and a group of entrepreneurs with significant experience in US growth.
ScorePlay: the future of sports storytelling
ScorePlay experienced the huge shift in sports consumption growing up as sports fans. In a 24/7 digital world, sports fans are no longer fully satisfied with the unilateral broadcast narrative and need constant authentic content from clubs, leagues, and competitions. Co-founders Victorien and Xavier were inspired to build ScorePlay when they realized the chaos of media management in sports was blocking this content at scale in a $240B sports market. They used AI to automate the management and distribution of photos and videos to enable athletes and clubs to tell the stories they wanted in real time, and now work across over 30 different sports. They help marketing teams at the largest organisations in the world, create the content that fans want to see every day. ScorePlay is the first all-in-one AI-powered media operating system powering sports.
"Sports teams have seen a meteoric rise over the past 20 years, but their media infrastructures just haven’t been able to keep up - they’re still using Google Drive, Dropbox and WhatsApp. We saw that gap grow so we went directly to the end-user and co-constructed a tech solution made for the sports industry. ScorePlay is built by and for sports organizations, which is one of the main reasons it has been hugely successful." - Victorien Tixier, CEO of ScorePlay.
In 2022, their revenue grew 1000%, and in under 2 years, ScorePlay has signed up over 120 sports organizations including the Swiss Football League, Sacramento Kings (NBA), West Ham United and Wolves (Premier League), Atlético de Madrid (La Liga), Major League Pickleball and 16 MLS and NWSL teams (including Angel City, Portland Thorns, Nashville SC, OL Reign, and Inter Miami). MotoGP also signed up to use the service. Today, more than 10,000 athletes (including Lionel Messi, Alex Morgan, Declan Rice, João Félix etc.) receive their content automatically through the ScorePlay Athlete App, to build their own brands like never before.
The investment will help ScorePlay grow their tech team, expand their New York office, open their Paris office and consolidate their position as the go-to media solution in sports.
About ScorePlay
ScorePlay is your best-in-class media solution that provides an automated architecture to centralise, distribute, and classify your digital assets, whether photos, videos, or live broadcasts. We are transforming sports organizations, automating their creative processes and growing their brands and unlocking new revenue. We are the bridge to the future of sports storytelling, from content capture to fan consumption. Automate. Grow. Unlock.
Credits
Photo credit: ScorePlay
