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 well-known 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. Its impressive client roster includes the Indian Premier League, the Women’s Premier League for cricket, FIFA+, and broadcasters Nippon TV and Clubber TV.
Founded in 2016 by Vinayak Shrivastav, Saket Dandotia, and Alok Patil, VideoVerse is based in Mumbai. The startup has been backed by investors such as Bluestone Equity Partners, A91 Partners, Alpha Wave, Evolvence India, and Moneta Ventures, raising a total of $105 million in funding to date.
Although no official valuation was provided for the deal, sources indicate VideoVerse was valued between $200 million and $250 million in its last funding round in 2023, with Minute Media’s acquisition falling within a similar range. Minute Media’s 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 a history of growth through strategic mergers and acquisitions, having previously acquired The Players’ Tribune, FanSided, Mental Floss, and STN Video.
VideoVerse initially developed a variety of AI tools. Its early work included technology to detect smoking and drinking for the Indian censor board to flag scenes for movie certification. The startup also worked on object identification for e-commerce videos. However, it later pivoted to focus exclusively on video editing and detection tools for sports broadcasters after an opportunity arose with Hotstar, which was seeking a solution to identify key action points in cricket matches.
A few years after its founding, VideoVerse discontinued its other products to concentrate solely on video-editing features for sports content. The company operates on a SaaS model, charging clients based on the number of hours of footage they need processed. VideoVerse has grown to achieve $65 million in revenue with an EBITDA margin between 35% and 40 percent.
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, such as creating a social media package of all three-pointers scored by a specific basketball player. The platform also includes AI-powered translation features to help sports properties reach a global fanbase. While the platform utilizes some third-party AI models, its core model for identifying key moments in a game is developed in-house.
The primary reason for Minute Media’s acquisition is to integrate VideoVerse’s technology with its own extensive publisher network. The goal is to better distribute content 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 offers a B2B content distribution platform used by nearly 500 publishers. CEO Asaf Peled sees a significant opportunity to create more content using VideoVerse’s platform and then monetize it through their existing distribution channels.
With this acquisition, Minute Media aims to target more U.S.-based sports leagues to adopt VideoVerse’s highlight-generating platform. The company is banking on AI to meet growing fan demand for dynamic digital content beyond traditional coverage, especially on mobile devices. While Minute Media is not currently in an active funding round, it may seek more capital in the coming quarters to fund future acquisitions.