Fund in the News: Sinclair Digital Ventures

US-based broadcaster Sinclair Broadcast Group has put aside $250m for its newly-formed corporate venturing fund, and will look to fund companies with which it can forge strategic partnerships, according to chief operating officer Rob Weisbord.

Founded in 1986, Sinclair either owns and operates, or provides programming and sales services to a total of 161 television stations spanning 79 markets. It launched Sinclair Digital Ventures in March this year, and Weisbord told Global Corporate Venturing that the fund will seek to invest at both early and late stage.

“The fund is a $250m fund,” Weisbord said. “We do not have a set amount but our sweet spot is probably $3m to $5m. If it is something bigger we think we can bootstrap on to our corporate business, we would look at that as well.”

Sinclair Digital Ventures was formed in order to help the company manage the transition from a television broadcaster to a business that manages audio and visual content on a range of platforms, including web and mobile.

“While we believe the television set will always be popular, we also have to recognise the fact that content is being distributed across various platforms,” Weisbord explained. “So we are morphing our business into a content company that is platform-agnostic, and felt the need to investigate various investments on the digital side.

“We already have a big online presence, we do 2,200 hours of live news every week that gets streamed to our websites, mobile apps and mobile sites. There is that appetite for it, and if we find the right deal for [a visual-based content creator], we would look at making an investment in that content company as well. We recognise the [potential] of all screens in our content strategy.”

Sinclair will look to invest across the digital technology and content spectrum, including in adtech, where innovation in programmatic and native advertising is driving the sector forward. For a content distributor of Sinclair’s size, keeping in touch with the technology being developed by early-stage companies is essential to maintaining a digital business in the long run.

“We are looking at it from a widescreen perspective,” Weisbord said. “For instance, [live video streaming app developer] Periscope has had a lot of press but there are a bunch of other companies in that space that are not getting that press. In the early stage we do not know who is going to be a winner or not, but we are really interested in the programmatic space.

“I think it is the early stages that are the Wild West, but we are exploring a multitude of solutions in the programmatic world because it is inevitable that part of the advertising across all platforms is going to be programmatic, so we have to be very detailed in how we distribute our ad sales on all our platforms.

“Currently, the solutions out there only look out at either a digital stage or a linear stage, and in a perfect world [the technology] would be looking at bridging the gap between all inventory sales.”

Sinclair Digital Ventures is also looking to form partnerships with its portfolio companies in order to help them scale their technology, particularly in the form of commercial agreements, and could hypothetically also make strategic acquisitions. It has already formed agreements with two startups: mobile sports score provider and social network ScoreStream, and social conversation tracking company Timeline Labs.

“We normally enter into some form of commercial agreement, either cash or distribution, with the companies we invest in,” Weisbord said. “So depending what their assets are, we will be able to scale their products through our ecosystem.

“It is not a pre-requisite but it is kind of what we look for in a company – if it is early stage – and most companies would love to have a traditional broadcasting company as a strategic partner to scale their technology.”