LiveClips Receives Investments Totaling $2.15 Million

LiveClips, a company specializing in the creation, digitization, and real-time delivery of smart video clips to sports and fantasy league fans via Internet-enabled and mobile devices, has received new investments totaling $2.15 million over the past two months.

CEO Lewis Bakes said LiveClips received $1.15 million in late December from two funds focused on investing in Connecticut businesses and managed by Advantage Capital Partners and Ironwood Capital Connecticut of Avon. Two private investors also participated, he said.

An additional $1 million cash infusion closed in February, he said, with $500,000 each from Advantage/Ironwood funds and Connecticut Innovations of Rocky Hill, the state’s quasi-public authority responsible for technology-based economic development. Last summer, Connecticut Innovations supplemented the initial investment made by Amazing Grace Media LLC, of New Canaan, a private firm led by Bakes, by investing $1 million in the company.

LiveClips’ proprietary smart video clipping technology ingests live feeds from games and creates, digitizes, and then delivers discrete searchable video clips of every play and replay to Web-enabled or mobile devices within 10 seconds of live action, in accordance with personalized filters set by customers. Live Clips, which relocated to Stamford from New York City in 2011, created 83,000 discrete video clips, with 6,887 distributed to fans who viewed them over 65 million times during the 2011 NCAA/BCS college football season. ESPN and Major League Baseball, among others, have worked with LiveClips’ technology.

Bakes said that LiveClips “continues to pursue its strategy of solidifying relationships with strategic customers, investors and partners who can provide the critical mass necessary for it to expand quickly enough to meet the growing demands of the marketplace.

“On the heals of another major national contract for NCAA college football for the 2011 season, LiveClips,” he said, “is currently working to finalize contracts to deliver our service offering for soccer, golf, football, baseball and basketball in 2012 and 2013.”

“We are pleased to strengthen our support of LiveClips with this new investment,” said Peter Longo, president and executive director of Connecticut Innovations. “Since LiveClips relocated to Connecticut last year, LiveClips has expanded and fortified its team and gained further customer traction. We look forward to the company’s continued growth and success.”

Speaking for the Ironwood-Advantage investment team, Marc Reich, president of Ironwood Capital, said, “LiveClips is demonstrating its technological prowess in delivering more sports clips faster than its competition. Our investment in LiveClips will help the company extend its team of experts and its infrastructure in Connecticut, as well as its marketing reach. We are teaming with a high potential growth company with the ability to lead an increasingly important industry.”