Earlier in January, Portuguese startup Full Venue announced the completion of a successful seed round that saw it generate 2 million euros ($2.2 million) in investment funding.
The success of the seed round means the company can expand its core operations team and strengthen its international presence. Just as importantly, it shows the confidence investors have in one of the new startups focused on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into marketing and consumer optimization solutions.
At the time, Tiago Costa Rocha, Managing Director of Full Venue, used the round to reiterate the company’s mission statement, saying: “We are delighted to have the support of investors and partners strategic partners who share our vision of reshaping the technological landscape of sports and events. . Through our unique approach, integrating AI for audience generation and focusing on simplicity, we aim to revolutionize the way businesses monetize their audiences. »
Full Vision’s proprietary software aims to improve the ease with which businesses, and in this case football associations and clubs, monetize their digital presence. This all happens thanks to AI segmentation. In effect, using AI to identify higher potential consumer segments, thereby increasing sales reach.
Speaking to GlobalData Sport, Costa Rocha says: “When you think about AI and everything brand and agency related, you think of something complicated and you don’t know what to do with it. We just want to add a little element of AI segmentation. We’re focusing on a niche that’s really easy to use and not that expensive.
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The low cost nature of the service is a facet of the business that Costa Rocha believes will virtually guarantee the growing adoption of AI marketing solutions. “If you plan to hire a consulting firm to build a data science team, or if you want to hire a data scientist and build a team in-house, this will incur much higher costs than just subscribing to Full Venue and start performing AI segmentation automatically. »
Partnerships
Although Full Venue also works with event companies such as popular music festivals Primavera Sound and MEO Mares Vivas, much of its attention has been directed towards sporting organisations, primarily football’s national governing bodies.
Costa Rocha revealed that the company’s initial foray into football was not initially a deliberate effort, but that identifying a gap in the sports market allowed Full Venue to expand into this sector.
“The technical teams (in federations and clubs) are not as developed because there is constant work with all the companies around the sports industry, and what they need to focus on is performance (on the ground),” he said. “So there was a place where a company like Full Venue could come in and provide real value.
“Our first client was a Football Federation (FA), but it was not on purpose, they were present at a conference where we were giving a presentation,” he explains before continuing: “There were a lot of businessmen from different sectors, and also a lot of people from the sports world, and the one who focused on our solution which was just the pitch of an idea, were the guys from the Belgian Federation.
Full Venue currently partners with several football bodies, such as Belgium, Wales and Romania, and the growth of this area of the company’s business is at the forefront of the company’s expansion work. Full Venue.
The commercial strategy is already paying off in terms of breaking into Europe’s top-tier football clubs, with 2020-21 Europa League winners Villareal recently signing up as Full Venue’s latest partner.
“What we want to have within one to two years is a solid presence in key championships on the European continent and start doing business in the United States.”
Importance in the market
Costa Rocha had previously worked within the Portuguese Federation, as well as several technology companies, with the combination of these experiences being key to piloting Full Venue in the sports market.
Full Venue was founded from this experience within the Portuguese FA, where take-up rates for data analytics were well above averages in other sectors, opening Costa Rocha’s eyes to the potential of a new marketing solution to take advantage of it.
“In the sports industry, it is easier to have (consumer) data, because the fan is delighted when they receive the right communication from the brand they love. So it was one of the triggers when I left the Portuguese Federation to launch Full Venue. It occurred to me that all these clubs and their federations needed this awareness.
“So you have the data, and the data comes from the brand, so even if you have a third-party company that manages your entire technology stack, that (data) is yours. It is therefore also important to manage within clubs and federations. Examining this data, applying some intelligence and delivering the right message to fans at the right time is key for the sports industry.
He adds that the commercial nature of the sports industry, where the line between fan and consumer is blurred, makes the prospect of AI segmentation for marketing purposes much more viable.
“We have the advantage of having an industry that everyone loves. If you get a message from a phone company in your email, you won’t even look at it, but if you get a message from your club showing a product you like, you’ve probably looked at it more than 10 times.
The company has already started applying its proprietary AI solution to commercial, ticketing and merchandising aspects to drive revenue growth for federations and clubs.
Seed Roadshow and the Future of AI
Costa Rocha has already outlined the company’s plans for start-up money, with its key allocation for their expansion goals. He identifies the expansion of the company’s current portfolio of sports partnerships and the development of its proprietary product as the key objectives of the funding round, with the expansion of the company’s current operational team a key precursor to achieving this.
Costa Rocha explains: “We are going to focus on two main areas. One of them is product development, (to) build this democratic product that will be open to everyone in the marketing industry in the verticals that we work in, to use Full Venue AI segmentation to increase results marketing.
He continues: “On the other hand, also in terms of business development, we want to establish partnerships with the biggest sporting competitions in the world and bring in the biggest music festivals. For all of this, we need staff, so we are going to hire some. It won’t be huge, we want to be strict about how we do our recruiting, but the goal is that over the next 12-18 months we can continue on this path and bring the product online.
While clients already have impression data from their own digital channels, Full Venue AI generates models to increase different metrics, whether sales or impressions for example, and generates new potential targets for the marketing team or their favorite advertising software platform such as Google. Advertising or MailChimp.
This is a technological feature that Costa Rocha believes will become increasingly popular as federations and clubs adopt a cheaper and more effective method of marketing.
“Ultimately, Full Venue will sit in the middle, helping marketers go to market (whether they’re on the brand side or the agency side),” he says.
“With all this information, it doesn’t make sense to market just because we need to focus on the data and if we have the data, let’s put some intelligence behind it.”
The software capitalizes on what Costa Rocha sees as an area that football has yet to fully catch up with, but also an area that will become crucial.
“Everyone will need to leverage the capabilities offered by AI to understand who their audience is, who are the (consumers) who are interacting with you and initiating communications,” he says.
“We are confident that within three to five years there will no longer be a digital marketing campaign targeting an audience you don’t know.”
Costa Rocha believes that in a few years, “everyone will at least use AI for marketing purposes”.
