Sacramento Media Tech Company Fantag Acquired

Source: Sacramento Business Journal, Mark Anderson
Photo: John Stone, CEO of Fantag (NOEL NEUBURGER | CORRESPONDENT)

Fantag, a local technology company that had raised venture capital and was led by a CEO with a successful track record, has been acquired.

Fantag had developed a cloud-based platform to allow sports fans to record and share game highlights with their smartphones.

The company will be folded into ScoreVision LLC, an Omaha, Nebraska-based developer of digital scoreboards, as well as scoring, content and statistical apps, meant to help high school and college teams offer a fan experience similar to professional sports.

“When you embed (Fantag’s) technology in what we do, it is very powerful,” ScoreVision President Michael Medrano told the Business Journal.

ScoreVision will keep Fantag’s Sacramento team as its West Coast video technology office, he said. ScoreVision also has an office in Texas, as well as its headquarters in Omaha.

“We’re very high on them and what they’ve built. Their technology stack is impressive,” Medrano said of Fantag. He said he was also interested in Fantag’s patents and intellectual property.

The companies had been in discussions about working together for nearly a year, Medrano said. They started talking about an acquisition early this year.

Fantag started up in Palo Alto in 2016 and moved to Sacramento in 2017 after raising $1.1 million in venture capital from Folsom-based Moneta Ventures LLC and other local investors.

Those investors included John Stone, who took over as CEO of Fantag. He previously co-founded Folsom-based PowerSchool in 1999 and sold it to Apple Inc. two years later for $62 million. PowerSchool is now the largest K-12 education technology company in the country with more than 2,500 employees.

Stone will join ScoreVision’s board of directors, Medrano said.

Medrano declined to disclose the terms of ScoreVision’s acquisition of Fantag, or either company’s revenue. ScoreVision has 50 employees and Fantag had five, he said.

Moneta Managing Director Lokesh Sikaria said the deal was not a cash transaction or an exit for investors. Instead, investors received equity in ScoreVision, he said. He declined to disclose its value.

For a small company like Fantag, the deal provided a safe harbor during these uncertain times, Sikaria said. He said the combination of the two companies’ technology has a value greater than their sum separately.

“It is two plus two equals five,” Sikaria said. “It makes a lot of sense for them, and it works well for us. They are very complementary offerings. The combination is a beautiful thing.”

Medrano said the acquisition talks predate the COVID-19 crisis and that the merger is a long-term play.

Because of the pandemic, gatherings for sports are on hiatus for an unknown period.

Still, the combined company will be rolling out new apps this year, Medrano said.

Fantag had a partnership with TeamSnap, a sports app with 20 million users. It also struck a partnership deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. to allow Fantag’s users to make instant highlights of high school football games across the country. Sinclair (Nasdaq: SBGI), based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, owns or operates 191 television stations in 89 markets across the U.S.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2020/04/17/sacramento-media-tech-company-fantag-acquired