Digital Seat Media Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

Digital Seat Media generated $1.6M in revenue in 2024.

Digital Seat Media generated approximately $1 million in annual revenue as of May 2022, up from roughly $200,000 in 2021. Fowler confirmed the figure to Latka, noting the company was tracking ahead of that run rate at the time of the interview.

Digital Seat Media was serving approximately 44 venues as of May 2022, spanning collegiate and professional sports. Named venue partners and customers include Learfield IMG, Oklahoma State, Baylor, Washington, the Rose Bowl, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Utah Jazz. Brand sponsors on the platform numbered approximately 50 and included Google, Alaska Airlines, Pizza Hut, and Starbucks.

Average contract value for smaller venues was approximately $15,000 per year, with larger venues paying six figures. Fowler gave a concrete example: a 50,000-seat NFL stadium with 10 home games would pay between $50,000 and $70,000 annually depending on which modules were activated. Pricing is based primarily on seat count and a baseline number of events, with the option to expand event activations as usage grows. One unnamed venue partner was running approximately 140 events per year, including concerts.

The platform demonstrated a 20 percent sales lift for Cheez-It products in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a data point Fowler cited as a key proof point for converting brand sponsors from discounted pilots to paid contracts.

Digital Seat Media operates a dual-revenue model. Venues and sports teams pay annual license fees to have the platform installed and activated. On the collegiate side, the company also takes a revenue share from brand sponsorships sold through the platform. Fowler said the two streams were tracking toward a roughly 50-50 split in 2022, with the revenue-share side potentially weighted slightly higher.

The company had approximately 900,000 individual QR codes installed across roughly 44 venues as of May 2022, with roughly 50 brand sponsors paying to reach fans through seat-level content. The platform supports 31 modules, and teams can change the active module mix from game to game. Installation is performed manually by the Digital Seat team; Fowler noted the Rose Bowl's 98,000 seats were installed in approximately 10 hours, and an Oklahoma stadium installation covered 86,000 seats in summer heat. The company described its growth channel as entirely word-of-mouth and virality through May 2022, with no marketing spend.

Profitability was not discussed in the interview. Gross margin, churn, LTV, CAC, and burn rate were not disclosed.

Digital Seat Media employed approximately 35 full-time team members as of May 2022, including staff who had recently transitioned from part-time to full-time roles as the company expanded. The engineering team consisted of 9 full-time engineers.

Fowler said the company's philosophy is to hire senior-level engineers rather than scale to a large engineering organization, citing co-founder Matt Sullivan's background as a senior engineer at Dell as the foundation of that approach. Plans to hire additional engineers and expand the sales team were tied to the then-closing $5 million round.