Privacy, Performance & Playbooks
Turning whitespace into strategy for a sports-tech startup.
Hey founders, funds, & friends 👋,
A warm welcome to the 62nd edition of the “Mehtta Ventures Dubai” investment digest newsletter, your weekly news digest about GAMES [Gaming, Ad Tech, Media Tech, Entertainment and Sports Tech] + AI startup and scaleup stories across the Middle East & India, digital / business trends shaping our lives and curated venture investment opportunities.
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Looking forward to meeting industry colleagues, friends and customers at CABSAT starting tomorrow in Dubai!
“Attention Economy” Startup to Watch - Data Clean Rooms (DCR)
ABOUT:
India’s first Web3-ready, privacy-first AdTech & audience intelligence platform
HYPOTHESIS:
As third-party cookies disappear, brands and media platforms urgently need privacy-first, decentralized audience data solutions built for a post-cookie world
WHY WE ARE INTERESTED:
Web3-ready Data Clean Room for privacy-led audience targeting
Founded by WPP veteran with 30+ yrs in media & data
Cost Advantage and fast growth with clients including Airtel, SRMG & GroupM across APAC & MENA
Today’s program:
How We Help Founders Build, Not Just Fund
And….Action!
How We Help Founders Build, Not Just Fund
At Pressplay Capital, we approach early-stage investing as active co-creation. We don’t just back companies — we help shape them. Over the past few weeks, we spent time with Company ABC, a startup operating at the convergence of sports, endorsements, and monetization — a space we believe is under-built in India and the Middle East despite the region’s massive engagement with sports and rising brand investment.
Our analysis benchmarked several global models — from sports data licensing firms like Sportradar and Stats Perform to brand-athlete marketplaces like OpenSponsorship and SaaS platforms like SponsorUnited. What we uncovered was a fragmented but rapidly expanding opportunity to build a “sponsorship infrastructure layer” — not just a contact database, but a structured, verified platform for athlete profiles, brand affiliations, and campaign analytics. This market is transitioning from manual matchmaking to scalable, intelligence-led deal flows.
Our recommendations to Company ABC reflected this shift. We proposed a three-tier revenue stack: (1) self-serve SaaS subscriptions for agents and small brands, (2) enterprise-grade dashboards for agencies and telcos managing athlete campaigns at scale, and (3) high-margin facilitation fees and commissions on closed deals. Additionally, we outlined how B2B licensing of endorsement data (via APIs) to media, OTT, and fantasy sports platforms could become a scalable channel over time.
We also helped them reposition the product around verified data ownership — making it the “source of truth” for sponsorship information, rather than just a directory. On distribution, we suggested partnerships with cricket and football associations to onboard athlete data at scale, and co-marketing with talent managers in Tier 1 markets across the GCC and India. As a next step, we will potentially collaborate on building their pricing model and GTM sprints with early adopters in sports marketing and digital commerce.
This is a real example of how Pressplay Capital works — as domain specialists who bring the research, relationships, and revenue thinking to unlock value early. Our team’s operating background across media-tech, ad-tech, and GTM advisory is not just part of the pitch — it’s what powers the portfolio.
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> PressPlay is where the attention economy meets real builders.
> We’re excited for the future of media-tech and AI-driven streaming—and look forward to partnering with those who share our vision.
Interested Investors / Limited Partners, please go ahead and book time with us here
If you know of startup founders building in the “eyeball economy”, please go ahead and connect us. Let’s pay it forward together :-) 2025 it is!
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While you wait for our next newsletter, I encourage you to check out our other newsletter / streaming consulting destination: The Streaming Lab where we cover streaming insights from MENA and India.
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