ScorePlay Raises $5M to Automate Sports Content Management
Media management startup ScorePlay announced a $5 million seed round raise Wednesday, led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, as it helps teams handle increasingly large flows of content.
Founded in 2021 in Lisbon, ScorePlay started in the soccer market, offering tools that allowed clubs to automate the ways they organize and distribute photos and videos. Since then, more than 120 organizations have signed up, including West Ham United, Atlético de Madrid, MLS’ Inter Miami CF, the NBA’s Sacramento Kings and Major League Pickleball. The new funds will help the company expand its U.S. operations after opening a New York office, and continue to grow in soccer as well as other sports.
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“Sports teams have seen a meteoric rise over the past 20 years, but their media infrastructures just haven’t been able to keep up,” ScorePlay CEO Victorien Tixier said in a statement. “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.”
In soccer, as much as any other sport, athletes’ personal social followings often eclipse their team’s accounts. Platforms like ScorePlay allow clubs to better take advantage of those additional distribution channels by automatically sending players (or their representatives) specific imagery to post. In recent years, machine learning improvements also mean these systems can quickly review thousands of incoming or archived assets to identify images or clips tied to specific moments, sponsors, etc.
Teams now also have more platforms to feed content to, from viral fan reactions on TikTok to slideshows from practice within owned and operated apps.
ScorePlay’s seed round also includes investment from Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures, Manchester United’s Raphaël Varane, Philadelphia Union’s Alejandro Bedoya and tennis player Dominic Thiem.
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