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Players’ Tribune Parent Minute Media Acquires Video Platform STN

jacob feldman
·2 min read

Sports content and tech company Minute Media has acquired STN Video as it looks to expand its offering for audiences and publishers.

STN’s digital video platform is built on content deals with more than 250 providers, including highlights agreements with major leagues such as MLB, the NBA and the NFL. In turn the company works with more than 2,000 publishing partners looking to add relevant content to their sites.

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For Minute Media, the relationships and rights add to the company’s athlete storytelling brand The Players’ Tribune, and its fan-driven sites 90min and Fansided. Minute Media will continue offering the platform to third-party publishers as well while monetizing the content through built-in advertisements. Those videos might also live on Minute’s owned-and-operated sites.

“It really gives like a 360 approach on how we can go out to market and also provide that added value to our users,” Minute Media CMO Andres Cardenas said in an interview. “It’s a lot of video content that we can distribute on a daily basis, and it allows for our content brands to really focus on that strong editorial video content instead of trying to ramp up and scale the video quantity.”

For now, Minute Media will also continue offering its existing video player, Voltax, though the products could be combined in the future. Tech synergies will also be identified; for instance, STN has developed an algorithmic tool that automatically matches relevant videos within third-party articles.

STN will continue to operate primarily out of Victoria, Canada. Financial terms of the deal were not announced, though Minute Media did raise capital from HSBC Innovation Banking and BlackRock accounts to help fund the transaction. Founded in 2011, Minute Media was previously reported to have considered IPO’ing at a $1 billion valuation. It currently has more than 500 employees around the world. Revenues grew 40% last year, according to Cardenas.

“It’s a big move for us in terms of the sports content industry,” he said of the acquisition. “It’s the credibility it provides us.”

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