ScorePlay, an artificial intelligence service for sports clips, has raised $13 million in series A funding, the company announced Tuesday.
The sports storytelling platform’s investors include 20VC venture capital fund founder Harry Stebbings, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six VC firm, NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, former Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg, and soccer star and former captain of the U.S. women’s national team Alex Morgan.
ScorePlay’s technology is used by more than 200 sports organizations around the world and helps teams streamline their highlights and clips using AI. The company’s clients include NBA and NHL franchises and leagues such as Major League Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.
Ohanian told CNBC that he’s not just an investor, but that he uses the technology through his ownership of NWSL soccer and TGL golf teams, in addition to his new track league, Athlos.
“So many people ask how we’ve been able to have so much success in emerging sports across so many different leagues and ScorePlay is the heart of one of the reasons why,” Ohanian said. “The last two years, they’ve just continued to execute above expectations and ScorePlay has just done such a heck of a job growing here in the States.
“I’ve been very happy to keep putting now millions of dollars at work every single round since,” he added.
Venture capitalist Stebbings said as teams and players move toward producing more of their own media and storytelling content, this tool will allow them to engage fans in new ways.
“Speed is crucial in sports media, with the ability to share highlights within an hour and keep up with [the] fast-paced news cycle,” he said.
ScorePlay’s service, created in 2021 by Victorien Tixier and Xavier Green, automatically tags and organizes content, allowing teams to speed up the delivery to everyone from broadcasters and sponsors to the athletes themselves.
“The idea is to maximize the distribution, both on your own social channel, but also distributing the content to your athletes, who are your best storytellers,” Tixier said.
He added that with so many different channels from social to broadcast and digital, it’s important that users are distributing the best content for each platform.
ScorePlay touts threefold year-over-year growth, and the company said it is profitable, with total funding at $20 million.
Previous investors include Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s 35V family office and Eli Manning.