Minute Media, a media startup backed by BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, announced on Monday that it is acquiring VideoVerse, an Indian AI startup. Minute Media owns prominent properties including Sports Illustrated, The Players’ Tribune, and 90 Minutes. VideoVerse provides technology that enables broadcasters to extract highlights and create content from sports footage.
VideoVerse serves a notable client base that includes the Indian Premier League, the Women’s Premier League Cricket tournaments, FIFA+, and broadcasters Nippon TV and Cubber TV. The Mumbai-based company was founded in 2016 by Vinayak Shrivastav. It is backed by investors such as Bluestone Equity Partners, A91 Partners, and Moneta Ventures, and has raised a total of $105 million in funding to date.
Although no official valuation was disclosed for the deal, sources indicate VideoVerse was valued between $200 million and $250 million during its most recent funding round in 2023. The acquisition by Minute Media is reported to be in a similar range. Minute Media CEO Asaf Peled stated this is the company’s largest acquisition to date in terms of both value and the size of the company acquired.
Minute Media has historically grown through strategic mergers and acquisitions, including its purchases of The Players’ Tribune, Fansided, Mental Floss, and STN Video.
In its early days, VideoVerse developed a variety of AI tools. These included technology to detect smoking and drinking scenes, which was used by the Indian censor board to flag content for movie certification. The startup also worked on object identification for e-commerce platforms. However, VideoVerse eventually shifted its focus to building video editing and detection tools specifically for sports broadcasters. This transition began when Hotstar, now owned by Jio, sought a solution to identify key action moments in sports, particularly cricket. A few years later, the company discontinued its other products to concentrate exclusively on video editing for sports content.
VideoVerse operates on a SaaS model, charging clients based on the number of hours of footage they need processed. The company has achieved $65 million in revenue with an EBITDA margin between 35% and 40%.
The company’s chief strategy officer, Prateek Sharma, explained that VideoVerse has recently launched new AI-powered tools. These allow clients to define custom rules for automatically generating content packages. For example, a broadcaster can create a compilation of all three-pointers scored by a specific basketball player and have it automatically published on social media. The platform also features AI-powered translation to help sports properties reach a global audience. While the platform incorporates third-party AI models, it relies on its own core proprietary model to identify key moments during a game.
The primary reason for Minute Media’s acquisition is to integrate VideoVerse’s technology with its own extensive publisher network. This will allow for better content distribution across various sports properties and generate additional advertising revenue from that distributed content.
According to Crunchbase data, Minute Media has raised $260 million and reaches over 200 million monthly users through its properties. It also operates a B2B content distribution platform used by nearly 500 publishers. CEO Asaf Peled sees a significant opportunity to use VideoVerse’s platform to create more content and then monetize it through Minute Media’s distribution and advertising capabilities.
With this acquisition, Minute Media aims to target more U.S.-based sports leagues to adopt its highlight-generating platform. The company is responding to multiple reports indicating that sports fans are seeking different kinds of content beyond traditional coverage, especially on mobile devices. Minute Media is banking on AI to create that dynamic content. While the company is not currently in an active funding round, it may seek more capital in the coming quarters to pursue further acquisitions.