West Palm Beach, Florida, United States: Spalk has announced its $3MM Series A investment round, led by the Greg Norman Company.

Additional investors in the round included Stadia Ventures, Icehouse Ventures and APEX Capital as well as involvement from a number of professional athletes including motorsport driver Mitchell Evans and National Basketball Association player, Steven Adams.

Spalk’s Virtual Commentary Studio technology is used by sports leagues and broadcasters to remotely produce and distribute multi-lingual commentary for live broadcasts. Fans are able to choose a commentator for each game that suits their preferred language, style or bias – driving fan engagement while increasing audience size and lowering production costs for content owners.

“Sport is all about emotion and the role of a sports commentator is to help the fans at home revel in that emotion,” said Greg Norman. “So we are, of course, excited by what Spalk is doing to allow broadcasters and leagues to more cost-effectively and remotely produce commentary for their fans around the world.”

Spalk was originally the winner in ‘Greg Norman’s Search for the Next Sports Entrepreneur’ held at the University of Miami in 2017, wherein Norman and his team of investors held a worldwide search to discover the next successful inventors, creators, and innovators in sport.

After leading Spalk’s Seed Capital raise in 2018, the Greg Norman Company has continued to support Spalk’s expanding offerings and the value their technology adds for some of the world’s leading sports properties.

Profitable since early 2021, Spalk’s browser-based software produces and distributes commentary for hundreds of live sports events each week. Their technology is used extensively by sporting bodies like FIBA, World Rugby and FIVB as well as broadcasters like DAZN and Sports Flick.

Additionally, Spalk has built the world’s largest Talent Marketplace of professional commentators — with access to pre-vetted freelancers in more than 50 languages across 30 sports.

“Remote production and personalisation of live content represent the intersection of two mega-trends in sport and we are thrilled to be on this journey with Spalk as they disrupt this multi-billion dollar, legacy industry,” said Brandon Janosky, Managing Partner at Stadia Ventures.

The funds from the over-subscribed round will be used to accelerate sales and marketing efforts, with Spalk seeing growth from sports properties with international fan bases as well as those organisations looking to reduce their production costs.

Having released SRT signal compatibility in early 2021, Spalk is also expecting to see increasing uptake in traditional broadcast coverage and distribution.

“Using our Virtual Commentary Studio, sports leagues and broadcasters no longer have to fly commentators to the stadium or studio to call games – they can do it from a laptop anywhere in the world,” said Ben Reynolds, CEO of Spalk.

“We are really proud to have support from Greg, Steven, Mitch and our other investors and are excited to continue leading the industry when it comes to remote commentary production and distribution.”