Automated sports video production company Pixellot has announced the completion of a new $16m (€14.3m) funding round as it looks to accelerate its sales and marketing activities to address the need for “safer, more cost-effective” solutions for broadcasting and statistics.
Israeli investment house Altshuler-Shaham has been added to the company’s existing investors.
Pixellot is based in Israel and counts Shamrock Capital, Firstime, Baidu and Asahi Broadcasting Company among its existing investors. Los Angeles-based Shamrock Capital led a $30m investment round in Pixellot in September 2018. This brought the sum raised by Pixellot to over $40m since its launch in 2013.
The latest investment comes after Brazilian media conglomerate Grupo Globo made a $3.3m investment in Pixellot in December 2019.
Shamrock Capital, Globo and the Arkin Family, another existing investor, were also involved in the latest fundraising round.
Adam Ben Dror, head of the alternatives department at Altshuler-Shaham, said: “With 8,000 fields and venues and 40,000 live games produced each month, Pixellot is clearly the leader in this market.
“Pixellot’s breadth of product offering and global capabilities truly set them apart and we are confident that enabling Pixellot to charge ahead and meet the growing demand for its products globally will bring great value to the sports world and to our investors.”
Pixellot’s AI-based automated production solution is installed at sports venues once and can then function automatically to produce and stream games live and on-demand. The company uses unmanned multi-camera devices, cloud-based machine learning and auto-production algorithms to track the flow of play, update scoring graphics, identify highlights and insert adverts without the need for human intervention.
Pixellot technology was used to produce a low-cost live stream from the first tee at the 2016 Ryder Cup at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in USA that was available via the official Ryder Cup website. In September, Estonian television and radio network operator Levira also teamed up with the company to produce and live-stream coverage of Estonian and Latvian basketball competitions.