Sharp Alpha Advisors announced the closing of Sharp Alpha Fund II, an oversubscribed $25 million venture capital fund investing in early-stage sports, gaming, and entertainment businesses.

Existing investments in Fund II include C15 Studio, which recently emerged from stealth mode as the operator and distributor of Formula 1’s new streaming channel. Previous investments include Almost Friday Media, Jackpot.com, and Betcha (acquired by Vivid Seats).

The fund targets seed investments ranging from $1 – 2 million. Sharp Alpha also operates a co-investment vehicle that provides limited partners the ability to invest additional capital in select deals alongside the fund.

Managing Partner Lloyd Danzig was recently named to Business Insider’s Top Venture Capitalists in Sports and ELG’s 40 Under 40. He is frequently featured by CNBC, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

The fund is backed by public companies, US fnancial institutions, pro sports team owners, family offces, top venture capitalists, and funds of funds, among others.

According to Danzig, there is a signifcant opportunity at the intersection of sports, gaming, media, and technology. “The competitive entertainment category is experiencing exponential growth but at the same time is desperate for innovation that early-stage companies are best positioned to supply.”

The fund has exceeded its $25 million capital raise target and expanded the size of its deal team.

Commenting on current market conditions, Danzig explained, “we are entering the most favorable period in the last 15 years to bet on great founders.”

Sharp Alpha’s advisory board includes Keith Horn, founder of Loring Capital Advisors and former COO of Elliott Management and Global Head of Leveraged Finance at Merrill Lynch; Emanuel Pearlman, the former Chairman of Empire Resorts and board member at several public companies; Daniel Bernard, Founder and Chairman of Redwood International Sports; Roy Behren, the President and Chief Investment Offcer of a $5.2 billion asset manager; and Don Kornstein, the Vice Chairman of Caesars Entertainment and former executive at numerous successful gaming companies.

In addition to investment capital, the frm provides portfolio companies with a suite of resources and opportunities spanning fundraising, revenue generation, brand awareness, commercial strategy, fnancial planning, and product development.

Before taking the stage at EEGS’ upcoming Free Webinar, ‘The Relevance of Media Buying Activity in the Affiliate Space’, Sportradar’s Head of Publishers Relations and Affiliation, Andre Machado, sat down with EEGS for an exclusive interview. In this in-depth conversation, Andre shares his expertise on the importance of media buying, affiliate marketing, and navigating the complex compliance landscape. Get a sneak peek at his insights and expert advice before he shares his knowledge with attendees at the free webinar.

Can you share some key insights into the evolution of digital marketing within the iGaming industry over the past decade, and how it has influenced affiliate marketing strategies?

Operators are subsequently turning to automation technology to scale their campaigns and streamline their marketing processes. Automation has been the key and is being used within programmatic advertising technology to efficiently acquire new bettors at this critical time. Programmatic automates the buying of online advertising in realtime to serve highly targeted adverts to the most relevant audiences, which is highly efficient and limits ad wastage. In fact, our proprietary ads programmatic marketing service has enabled our global operator clients to increase click-through-rates by up to 60%, while increasing net gaming revenue by as much as 110%. We estimate that reducing the manual inputs in this process saves our clients up to two months’ worth of productivity annually.

Automation is similarly enhancing operators’ advertising performance across publisher sites, such as high-profile sports and media news websites, and for their sponsorships. By using data to understand fans’ most consumed online content, Sportradar’s Engagement Tool, the adtech we are using in our Affiliate Project, uses automation to display contextually relevant betting ads across both premium publishers and rights holders’ websites. The range of these adverts and the speed at which they are delivered increase click-through-rates by up to 2,2X which would be impossible to replicate manually. The affiliate space is following these macro trends and we are seeing a more sensible vision from the Operators to new ways of cooperation, and Media Buying is one of them.

With your extensive experience in digital marketing, what do you believe are the most critical factors for success in affiliate media buying specifically within the iGaming sector?

If operators can better understand their fans’ interests and browsing habits, they can more effectively target and engage them with personalised content. This is key to acquiring new customers, re-engaging existing players and building brand awareness. Marketing solutions that would enable them to fully understand where and how bettors were interacting with their brand. These customer insights power digital marketing technologies, which decide the most relevant bets to serve to players, on the right platform at the right time. This personalised approach engages fans more deeply, delivers greater conversions, customer loyalty and revenue growth, while limiting advertising waste and compensating the right partners/affiliates.

How do you see the role of data analytics shaping the future of affiliate marketing, and what tools or methodologies do you find most effective in optimizing media buying campaigns?

AI’s role cannot be understated, but it needs data to deliver marketing efficiency. Similarly, data is a resource that is only as useful as how effectively you use it. Therefore, the real game changer is when the two are combined. Operators possess deep pools of anonymised customer data, which offer valuable insights into fan behaviours and interests, such as previously bet-on teams or most frequented digital channels. AI algorithms within digital marketing technologies process this data to create personalised dynamic football adverts that can be delivered on fan-favourite channels. For instance, a FCPorto fan who regularly uses Instagram might receive dynamic ads containing the odds for their team’s next fixture across the platform’s story’s function. With this data readily available, the AI capabilities within marketing services allow operators to truly create highly targeted and customised fan experiences that achieve greater acquisition and brand awareness.

Given the dynamic regulatory landscape surrounding iGaming advertising, how do you advise affiliates to navigate compliance risks effectively while still maximizing their efforts?

By focusing on the content that fans care most about, AI-driven personalisation tools can drive efficiency and limit advertising waste, everything aligned with the current local regulation. This is essential at this moment, when operators must supply advertising creative for the hundreds of weekly matches played across football’s biggest competitions, as an example. While this was previously a protracted, manual process for creative teams, AI and automation technologies are powering Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) solutions to address this operational challenge quickly and at scale. We use DCO in our industry-specific Dynamic Display solution to engineer an unlimited supply of personalised betting advertising creative, based on fan content preferences and the most popular pages on operators’ websites. The customised content within these creatives engages end users more deeply and improves click-through-rates, while automation saves valuable time and money to achieve more effective budget spend and higher ROI.

Given the ever-changing landscape of digital advertising, what emerging trends do you foresee shaping the future of affiliate media buying, and how should marketers adapt to stay ahead?

In the same way that football clubs allocate their transfer budgets effectively to deliver the best performance on the pitch, operators who execute efficient marketing strategies are most likely to succeed in the marketplace. By leveraging data and AI within the latest advertising technologies, operators can better understand their customers, find their audience quickly and serve them with the content that’s most relevant to them. As with player scouting, to find a hidden gem, you often need to search where others aren’t looking. Similarly, with betting customer acquisition it pays to have exclusive access to audiences. With our Engagement Tool, we work with a single operator in each geographic market to gain visibility on premium publishers in the region, while using our unique adtech to deliver automated, contextually relevant ads that subsequently delivers strong acquisition performance. This might be a trend, it would help to balance the competitiveness within the markets.

Sphaira Innovation, a not-for-profit harnessing the power of people and technology to make positive change, has acquired video games market insights specialist Playmob.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, creates a formal relationship between Playmob and Sphaira Innovation’s PlanetPlay, which is bringing the games industry and players together to fight climate change.

Playmob CEO Jude Ower – who now becomes Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of Sphaira UK – has worked closely with PlanetPlay on the launch of its Make Green Tuesday Moves campaign, which aims to help games studios and players make important real-world impact in the fight against climate change.

Alongside PlanetPlay CEO Rhea Loucas, Ower also recently led a games industry delegation to the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) Climate Promise event at UN HQ in New York – an initiative to support countries as they increase their climate action contributions.

Meanwhile, Ower is also the Co-Founder of the Playing For The Planet Alliance and Co-Author of the recently published book ‘Gaming for Good: Unlocking the Power of Gaming to Create a Better World for Us All’, which also supports green projects via PlanetPlay.

And in 2021, she worked with the UNDP on the ‘People’s Climate Vote’, the biggest survey of consumer attitudes towards climate change, which was facilitated through Playmob’s innovative game insights platform and reached 33 million gamers worldwide. The survey had 1.2 million validated votes in 50 countries around the world.

She is speaking this week at the UK Government’s Department for Business & Trade GREAT FUTURES event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she is discussing how the UK video games industry can work with Saudi Arabia in areas such as gaming and sustainability. She is joined at the event by Sphaira Innovation UK Chairman and Sphaira Innovation AG Board Member Dirk van Daele.

Working alongside PlanetPlay under the Sphaira Innovation umbrella, Playmob is again working with the UNDP on a new and even more ambitious international study of whether people consider climate change to be a global emergency, and how they would like their countries to tackle the issue.

Sphaira Innovation UK CSO Jude Ower said: “Playmob’s mission is closely aligned with PlanetPlay, and we are delighted to announce that we are merging our important efforts, and Playmob is being acquired by PlanetPlay. Through the projects we have been working on together, it is clear that our partnership is a strong move for our industry and pushing the sustainability x gaming agenda forward. PlanetPlay and Sphaira is the right home for Playmob and we are excited for the next part of our green gaming journey together.”

Sphaira Innovation UK Chairman & Sphaira Innovation AG Board Member Dirk van Daele offered: “After having been accepted by major game studios and music artists in supporting our not-for-profit eco donate platform, we are excited for Playmob and Jude to join us. Her efforts and established track record in ‘playing for good’ will help us to scale even faster for the benefit of the climate.”

PlanetPlay CEO Rhea Loucas added: “PlanetPlay as a disruptive NPO is constantly seeking innovative solutions for engaging billions of gamers as part of our mission to combat climate change. We have already been working closely for a long time with Playmob and Jude Ower on a few exciting projects; with the acquisition, we will be able to join forces and achieve our goal together. With three billion players around the world, and through the combination of our gaming and sustainability efforts, we can all collectively make a difference for our planet.”