Aser Ventures, a UK-based investment platform specialising in sports, media and entertainment and founded by Andrea Radrizzani in 2015, has agreed to merge two of its portfolio companies.
UK-based Eleven Sports is expected to acquire for an undisclosed amount US-based sports media platform Team Whistle and cement a collaboration that developed after what was then Whistle Sports raised $28m in its series D round in mid-2018.
The acquisition will bring together Eleven’s 30,000 hours of live sport each year with Whistle’s 629 million aggregated social media followers and 4 billion monthly video views.
Pro forma revenues for the combined group are expected to be in excess of $300m for the financial year ending June 30.
Eleven’s parent company, Aser Ventures, invested in Whistle in June 2018 and Radrizzani joined the Whistle board. Eleven and Team Whistle’s investors currently include Sapphire Sport, Go4itCapital, Carsten Thoma, NBC/Sky Sports, Discovery, ITV, Liberty Global, Snap, Emil Capital Partners, Corrum Capital, Tegna, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Elizabeth Murdoch.
Radrizzani, who is also founder of Eleven, said: “We have long recognised the opportunities for partnership between Team Whistle and the wider Aser portfolio…. Together, we look forward to delivering on our goal of creating a global destination for live and on-demand sports content.”
John West, Team Whistle founder and executive chairman, will join Eleven’s board while CEO Michael Cohen will continue to lead Team Whistle.
