Cast Iron Media’s Sports-Specific AdTech Platform Unlocking 'Many Millions' for MLB

Cast Iron Media’s Sports-Specific AdTech Platform Unlocking ‘Many Millions’ for MLB

Cast Iron Media (CIM) recently announced a five-year extension of its strategic partnership with Major League Baseball. The deal enables the four-plus year-old, now tech-enabled, ad sales and placement company to increase marketable inventory on its proprietary sports-centric ad-server–the Foundry, and it will help the league to maximize the value of its out-of-market streaming rights as streaming viewership continues to grow.

MLB fans watched a record 14.5bn minutes of MLB.TV in 2024 (+14% YoY).

MLB will also become an equity partner in the company as part of the expanded tie-up. 

CIM accurately delivers targeted local and regional adverts, in volume, across Connected TV devices and other OTT platforms.

“It’s what makes us unique,” Kent Heyman (CEO, Cast Iron Media) said. “We [offer advertisers exactly the placement] they want, [to the zip code level], when they want it. That level of precision can't be replicated [by the RSNs or] anywhere else.”

CIM disclosed it secured strategic investments from Orkila Capital and David Blitzer’s Bolt Ventures alongside the MLB news. 

The Foundry “is an important evolution of the business. [It] has changed the game,” Tory Palmer (investor, Bolt Ventures) said.

Terms of the funding round were not disclosed.

Cast Iron Media was established in 2021 when Maury Gallagher and a group of investors acquired an 80% stake in SportStream Live. The company was early to recognize that despite the growth in out-of-market streaming, brands and advertisers weren’t effectively marketing to or reaching the viewing demo.

COVID (think: relocation) and the expansion of legalized online sports betting have been catalysts in the rise of out-of-market game viewership. 

Historically speaking, rights owners/holders relied on robust, albeit generic, ad servers, like Google Ad Manager and Freewheel, to manually fill their digital demand. Then they would apply some ‘bending’ to insert the commercial in live game programming. 

“The old way of delivering ads was a little bit of sausage making in the back office,” Heyman said. “If a spot [went] without an ad, or the wrong ad [was inserted], then [that became] wasted value for the team and a wasted opportunity for the advertiser.”

Rights owners/holders did the best they could.

“But regional and local ad [spots] are highly prized, there’s a thirst for them, and there had been a technology impediment to [efficiently filling them] at scale before we arrived,” Heyman said.

That is in part because the generic ad servers used do not account for how sports are scheduled. While ad campaigns tend to be booked on a 24/7 basis, without any specific content receiving prioritization, games (i.e. sports’ premium viewing window) are often played for just a few hours in the evening. 

And unlike a news show or sitcom, sporting events are unpredictable (i.e. ad calls come at random and there isn’t a set number of pods that will necessarily run in-game). Weather can also force their delay or postponement.

Rights owners/holders can, as noted, manage these challenges.

“But when you're talking about marketing billions of [digital] impressions [in real time, delivery really] needs to be automated,” Heyman said. “So, we built the technology.”

The Foundry enables advertisers to accurately and efficiently place targeted in-game ads across hundreds of markets for every viewer of each piece of content that runs.

“Through our technology we can reserve spots in live sports [events and] ensure that the ads are delivered on a virtually 100 percent guaranteed basis,” Heyman said. The brand “gets [the placement] they want, and we minimize waste on the rights holder/team or league side.”

And the platform enables the rights owner to manage its inventory. The Foundry has billing, reconciliation, and reporting functionality ensuring a single source of truth exists for all parties related to each ad unit purchased. 

That may not sound particularly valuable to a team or league dealing exclusively with national advertisers. But transactions with regional or local brands can be cumbersome.

“You might have 1,000 [different] bills to send out and 1,000 [unique] ads to upload,” Heyman said. “It’s difficult to [do that] without a robust technology platform, [and] that's where we [come] in.”

But CIM is not a pure AdTech play. 

The company actively works alongside its “rights holder [partners] to develop relationships with advertisers, agencies, or [brands] that are desirous of getting in front of fans,” Heyman said. Then it works to “make that transaction happen.”

Rights owners/holders delivering out-of-market viewership at scale through a streaming service and failing to consistently serve up targeted local ads are leaving meaningful revenue on the table, and that scenario is more common than one may realize.

We’ve all watched “a game and [have seen] ‘enjoy the Zen’,” Heyman said. “Well, that's an ad [slot] that didn't get sold. Or [you’ll see] the same ad three times in a row. [That is an] inefficient use of valuable [inventory], and we seek to rectify that.”

The company’s proprietary commercial inventory management platform eliminates inventory waste and drives ‘many millions’ in incremental revenue for its rights holder/owner partners (a list that includes Major League Baseball).

Cast Iron Media rolled out its ad-server with MLB during the ‘24 season. It started with the league given its abundance of premium inventory and the dearth of competition capable of drawing mass viewership during the summer months.

Baseball is “really essential for the ad planner who wants to do a year-long campaign,” Heyman said.

The company has since developed a broader ecosystem of rights owners, virtual distributors, and other programming partners in control of game inventory.

“In total, we're [now] able to offer [advertisers] access to about 5,000 games annually across MLB, the NBA, NHL, and NCAA,” Heyman said.

CIM views the Foundry as enabling technology. So, the company only charges for its use if the rights owner/holder is not leveraging the platform to sell targeted ad spots (think: white label deployment). 

Otherwise, the company retains a percentage of the ad units it sells on behalf of its partners.

Heyman declined to disclose financial data for the privately held company. However, he did say revenues are “significant and growing,” and that the business has been “profitable from day one.”

Proceeds from CIM’s recent capital raise will be used to iterate on its tech stack. The company is striving to be able to deliver hyper-local ads that will, in theory, open its doors to a new tier of buyers (think: local businesses without larger agency support). 

CIM also intends to use funding to build out its sales force. The goal is to broaden the number of relationships it has with agencies and brands, so that it can drive even more growth for league partners.

How much upside remains in the company?

It’s hard to say because even if CIM successfully adds rights and ad inventory, it still must sell it. Remember, there are partners on both sides of the table in a marketplace business.

But the goal is “to double our inventory and double our sales in the next few years,” Heyman said.

There’s seemingly no reason that couldn’t happen. 

“As viewership continues to migrate to CTV and OTT, highly targeted, and therefore high value ad delivery, [will continue] to drive incremental value to rights holders,” Palmer said. “We see a significant opportunity to drive both efficiency and throughput with Cast Iron’s tech-enabled solutions.”

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