Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), founded in 2007 and based in Irvine, CA, builds technology and services to enable celebrity endorsement and consumer engagement through its Fantapper platform. Fantapper, launched in November 2010 and recently updated to Fantapper 2.0, provides real-time access to celebrity and athlete information via proprietary apps and live Twitter and Facebook feeds and enables users to collect, curate and share photos, videos, articles and files. The platform supports over 4,000 signed athletes and celebrities and includes a broad partnership with the MLB Players Association; clients include MLB Players Association, ESPN, Fox Sports, Sony Entertainment, USAA, Tostitos, Pine-Sol, Digitas, AKQA and CBS Outdoor. BAT sells its endorsement and clearance services to brand advertisers and agencies, positioning Fantapper as a one-stop endorsement and media clearance solution. The company announced plans to use new funding to expand and grow the Fantapper service and to drive sales growth within its celebrity endorsement and clearance business. The articles report total funding to date of over $34M. BAT offers a proprietary endorsement-matching engine that evaluates campaign objectives and celebrity brand fit to recommend appropriate athletes, actors and other talent. The platform can search a roster of more than 38,000 celebrities and the company reports more than 3,600 celebrities have signed onto its Endorsement Platform. BAT says its technology compresses typical endorsement deal timelines from roughly six months to about two weeks. The company’s main revenue stream is a service fee advertisers pay to use the platform, and revenues are expected to double this year to $30 million. BAT plans to use new capital to extend its Endorsement technology into music and other celebrity categories and to pursue international expansion. The company was founded by Ryan and Chad Steelberg, who previously founded and sold several companies prior to BAT.

Total raised

$28M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

May 2012