Athlete marketing platform Opendorse fetches $3.1 mln

Lincoln, Nebraska-based Opendorse, an athlete marketing platform, has secured $3.125 million in funding. Previous backers Serra Ventures and Flyover Capital led the round.

Lincoln, Neb. (June 27, 2019) — opendorse, the leading athlete marketing platform, announced today the launch of its new platform, following a close of a $3.125MM round in funding. The round brings opendorse’s total funding to $9.525 million since the company’s founding in 2012.

The newly overhauled platform and additional capital will allow the company to keep up with record-breaking growth over the last 12 months. This latest round was led by repeat investors Serra Ventures and Flyover Capital. Serra Ventures previously led opendorse’s Series A round of $3.5MM in 2017, in which Flyover Capital also participated. Additionally, Flyover Capital led opendorse’s $1.5MM round in 2015. This raise also includes participation from existing investors including Sean Bratches, Managing Director, Commercial Operations of Formula 1, and Dan Mannix, CEO of CSM North America. Over $1MM came from new investors, including Nelnet (NYSE: NNI) and Collaborative Capital. Lincoln-based Nelnet has been one of the biggest supporters and investors in Hudl, one of the most successful sports technology startups. Also headquartered in Lincoln, Hudl has raised over $100 million to date. Collaborative Capital is led by an exclusive group of prominent business executives and family offices from Kansas City.

The latest edition of opendorse’s platform provides a best-in-market experience for social marketers at teams, leagues, associations, sponsors, and brands, while maintaining the simplicity that has made it the preferred social publishing platform for more than 7,000 athletes. These athletes and their partners provided the feedback necessary for opendorse to create this best-in-class platform.

“This raise provides opendorse with a clear path to profitability in the short-term and sets up the company to surpass 1,000 customers in the medium-term and 100,000 athletes worldwide in the long term,” opendorse Co-Founder and CEO Blake Lawrence said. “We used six years of experience alongside the best in social and sports to envision the platform that will help our partners and thousands of athletes win today and well into the future. This doesn’t just add another tool to the market — it can create fundamental change in what athlete marketing can be.”

opendorse’s new platform features include: ● Expand athlete-driven distribution. Users can now schedule and share content with unlimited athlete channels and users. ● More shareable media. Athletes can now publish posts with multiple pieces of media per platform (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) limitations. ● Improved media organization. Users can select and share content directly from the media library. ● Streamlined partner-to-athlete communication. A note sharing feature allows users to share content notes and suggestions with athletes. ● Customized workflows and a simplified process to build integrations with tools tailored to customer needs.

Over the last year, opendorse has experienced tremendous growth. Its customer base quadrupled and subscription revenue grew by eight times. The number of athletes using the platform now is currently over 7,000, with hundreds of customers sharing content through opendorse. In 2018 alone, the opendorse team grew by 50 percent. To accompany the additional team members and future projected growth, opendorse moved into a new headquarters in mid-2018. Located steps from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, the office is home to 37 employees with space to accommodate over 50 personnel.The new platform and fundraise positions opendorse to make the company the largest publisher of sports-related social content in the world by December 2019, besting big names like ESPN, CBS Sports and Bleacher Report.

“If somebody had told you five years ago that a media company like ESPN or Bleacher Report would not be the biggest distributor of sports content on social, you would not have believed them,” Sean Bratches said. “But social media has changed the game — and opendorse has created the ultimate solution that allows athletes and brands to distribute content at scale. It’s exceptional how far opendorse has come in such a short period of time. We’re still in the early stages, though. In a few years, you will be hard-pressed to find an athlete not marketing themselves through opendorse.”

opendorse partners include the MLBPA, NFLPA, PGA TOUR, LPGA, WNBPA, more than 50 college athletics programs and dozens of professional sports teams. The biggest brands in sports all turn to opendorse to coordinate social media campaigns with athletes, including giants like Allstate, Citi, Pepsi, EASports, Campbell’s, Marriott, Procter & Gamble and Wendy’s.

“opendorse continues to set the gold standard for how athletes and brands can share content on social media,” said Rob Schultz, Managing Partner at Serra Ventures. “A quick look at the number of athletes, brands, and partners who currently use the platform confirms just that. Blake and (co-founder) Adi (Kunalic) have done a remarkable job developing a turnkey solution that makes it easier and more efficient for brands and athletes to distribute content than anything else on the market. opendorse’s brand new product only enhances its value proposition.”

About opendorse opendorse helps athletes share content on social. More than 7,000 athletes around the world use opendorse to receive content from partners and publish to their social channels with one click. Leading sports organizations like the PGA TOUR, NFLPA, MLBPA, WNBPA, LPGA, dozens of professional and collegiate sports teams, and hundreds of brands use the platform to send video highlights, photos, GIFs, and more to athletes.

The publishing process is lightweight. Once registered, athletes receive a text message when their team, league, or brand partner has content for them to share on social media. The athlete simply reviews the content and hits ‘approve’ — opendorse does the rest. Founded in 2012 by two former Nebraska football players, opendorse has become the world’s leading athlete marketing platform.

Source: Pehub.com

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