Dublin and New York-based VISUA now enables sponsors to find new sponsorship opportunities in future sports footage. SORT allows sponsorship agencies and asset owners to identify new brand placement opportunities for sponsors and even provide potential exposure ROI data from historical footage and media, allowing precise valuation for possible sponsors.

Leading Visual-AI company, VISUA has launched a key new feature that will allow sponsors as well as asset owners (such as teams, event organisers and stadium owners) to uncover new sponsorship opportunities from existing and historical footage of games and events.

SORT will be revolutionary in ensuring that sponsorship spend can be maximised by delivering branding exposure that viewers of broadcast and ever more important streams actually see.

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The Sports industry is poised for accelerated growth as we exit the COVID pandemic phase, with a projected $501.43 billion in 2022 (representing 41.3% CAGR). The majority of this spend, (~80% of it), will be spent on TV and digital streaming rights. Meanwhile sponsorship in sports is also predicted to almost double, from just under $65 billion in 2021 to over $112 billion by 2030.

These levels of investment create pressures on asset owners and brands alike to maximise sponsorship opportunities, which drives them to understand not only the ROI on current sponsorships but to look for newer and better ways to engage fans with sponsor brands.

In response to this requirement VISUA has developed a new technology called SORT (Sponsorship Opportunities Research Tracking), also known as whitespace analysis. In practice, this is the opposite of brand detection in that SORT looks for potential placements without branding that gained significant exposure, in terms of time on screen. By combining object and placement detection, sponsorship agencies and asset owners can identify new brand placement opportunities for sponsors and even provide potential exposure ROI data from historical footage and media, allowing precise valuation for possible sponsors and their expected return on said sponsorship.

VISUA, co-founder and CTO, Alessandro Prest explains: “SORT works by looking for the branding gaps in footage. This can include player’s shirts, advertising panels around a pitch, track or court, vehicles or any other object that could carry branding. We identify these objects and count the frequency and time that they appear in footage. When provided to sponsorship valuation platforms, it allows them to calculate the potential value that these new opportunities can deliver.”

Luca Boschin, VISUA, co-founder and CEO, adds: “This addition to our technology stack really highlights the coming of age of Computer Vision and how it is being embraced in the business world. We are no longer the sole innovators in terms of how computer vision is applied in business and industry, but rather our customers are now approaching us with new challenges to solve. SORT will be revolutionary in ensuring that sponsorship spend can be maximised by delivering branding exposure that viewers of broadcast and ever more important streams actually see.”

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