Minute Media Buys VideoVerse to Scale AI Sports Highlights

Minute Media acquires VideoVerse to automate sports highlights

Minute Media announced it has acquired Mumbai-based VideoVerse, an AI video company that extracts highlights and automates content creation from sports footage. VideoVerse’s client list reads like a who’s who of global sports streaming: the Indian Premier League, Women’s Premier League cricket, FIFA+, and broadcasters including Nippon TV.

Founded in 2016 by Vinayak Shrivastav, VideoVerse pivoted from a broader AI toolkit to focus on sports video processing. The company operates as a SaaS platform that charges by footage hours, and has grown to roughly $65 million in revenue with an EBITDA margin in the 35–40% range, according to its leadership.

While neither side disclosed the purchase price, sources said the deal is in line with VideoVerse’s 2023 valuation of about $200–250 million. Minute Media called this its largest acquisition by both value and company size, and it arrives on the back of the publisher’s roll-up strategy that already includes properties like The Players’ Tribune and Sports Illustrated.

What makes VideoVerse strategic is practical, production-grade AI: rule-driven highlight generation (e.g., all three-pointers by a named player), translation for international audiences, and a proprietary core model that identifies key moments while blending third-party models into workflows.

Minute Media intends to marry this capability with its distribution network and ad stack. The play is straightforward: create more snackable clips faster, publish them across Minute Media’s properties and B2B publisher network, and drive incremental ad revenue and audience reach—especially on mobile.

For broadcasters and leagues this union matters. Automated highlight pipelines reduce turnaround time from minutes or hours to near-real-time, enable personalized and player-specific packages, and open new distribution windows on social platforms. Crucially, added translation and templating can turn a single match into dozens of localized clips.

That said, integrating AI into sports workflows raises operational questions: rights and licensing for automated clips, quality and bias in event detection, latency requirements for live games, and clear attribution for distributed content. Successful rollouts balance automation with editorial controls and clear monetization rules.

For media owners, leagues, and streaming platforms considering similar moves, here are practical benefits and next steps:

• Faster highlights: shorten clip production to near-live and boost social distribution velocity.
• Personalization: automatically create player-specific, team-specific, or event-specific packages.
• Global reach: use AI translation and templating to localize content and expand audiences.
• Monetization lift: pair automated clips with targeted ad products and distributed placement for higher CPMs.

Minute Media’s acquisition of VideoVerse signals how media companies are moving from licensing single tools to owning end-to-end pipelines that combine AI creation, editorial governance, and distribution. For rights holders and broadcasters, the takeaway is to treat AI not as a novelty but as a measurable production layer that needs KPIs, guardrails, and commercial alignment.

As the sports audience fragments across apps and short-form platforms, expect more deals that pair content engines with distribution muscle. Organizations that plan pilots, define rights and measurement up front, and iterate on model accuracy will capture the upside fastest.