- Major League Soccer starts its 30th season this Saturday, looking to capitalize further on “the Messi effect.”
- Inter Miami and MLS use ScorePlay to manage and distribute content efficiently amid rapid expansion.
- ScorePlay secured $13 million in Series A funding to enhance features and support for sports content needs.
Major League Soccer kicks off its milestone 30th season this Saturday, February 22nd, and expectations are high.
The league in 2024 experienced significant growth in social followers, ticket sales, and corporate sponsorships, thanks in large part to the global fandom of Argentine soccer star, Lionel Messi, who joined Inter Miami in 2023.
To build on the momentum of the “Messi effect” and growing interest in the league in the US and internationally, MLS must keep its fans supplied with a constant flow of high-quality content.
“Sports franchises have many challenges when it comes to managing their assets for marketing and promotion,” said Jason Teitler, who has worked with brands and sports teams and is an EVP at Burson, a communications agency. “Inventory management is the most important. A sports franchise must be certain to have a wealth of appealing, high-quality digital and traditional content for a variety of platforms and formats.”
Since 2023, Messi’s team Inter Miami has used a specialist content management system for sports called ScorePlay.
“MLS has an agreement in place with ScorePlay,” said Roman King, MLS creative director of brand marketing, in an email. “With limitless potential ahead, the league and its clubs are closely aligned to ensure content management practices are of the highest caliber and can keep up with the league’s rapid growth.”
Now, ScorePlay is well-positioned to build on its existing features and attract new customers: Last week, the company closed its Series A funding round, raising $13 million in venture capital from Harry Stebbings’ 20VC, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, APEX Capital, and an array of athlete investors, including NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo and soccer great Alex Morgan.
ScorePlay — founded in 2021 by Victorien Tixier and Xavier Green, and first used as a platform for France’s Toulouse Football Club — provides an AI-powered and centralized platform for uploading, tagging, and managing content. The system is designed to speed up asset delivery to broadcasters and sponsors, enable simultaneous multilingual distribution, and provide athletes quick access to their images for their own brand building.
ScorePlay now works with some 200 teams, 50 of which are US-based, including NBA and NHL teams. Tixier, ScorePlay’s CEO, said the idea came from seeing how teams struggled to handle content demands across disparate tools and systems.
“It’s hard to believe how chaotic everything is,” Tixier said. “It’s not that they don’t have enough tools — they almost have too many. It’s super fragmented and very siloed. Photos on one platform, big files going through the servers. Fragmentation is a very big aspect of the problem.”
Tixier said the company will use its new investment to add product features and beef up customer support. “As we grow, it’s important to grow the customer success team to maintain the same level of service we have always had,” Tixier said.
Sports teams are facing more competition for attention, so speeding up content delivery is a priority, according to MLS’ King. “As MLS and its clubs produce more content than ever, maintaining consistency, searchability, and discoverability across the league and its platforms is essential to ensure real-time distribution and deliver a personalized fan experience utilizing our wide array of stunning imagery,” he said.
Speed is important not only for sharing results but also for building brands for teams and athletes alike.
“Unless something is real-time, it’s not worth anything anymore,” said Harry Stebbings, the founder of 20VC, which led the funding round. “You need that content in the next 10 minutes because your player needs to post it within an hour of the game being done. Tomorrow doesn’t count.”
Stebbings said he is impressed by ScorePlay’s product and its founders’ ability to close deals with sports franchises. “Teams are really hard to sell into, and leagues even more so,” Stebbings said. “These are traditionally relatively non-technology-first buyers, where trust is really at the center.”
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