Click here to view the original article by Rob Schaefer on Sports Business Journal.
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Artificial intelligence-powered social media moderation platform Respondology has raised a $5 million Series A-1 funding round, co-led by existing investors Iron Gate Capital and SJF Ventures. Zelkova Ventures, Boulder Heavy Industries and RLB Holdings also participated.
The round follows an $11 million Series A the company closed in 2023 from the same investor group. The new funds will be funneled into product development and new hires across AI engineering, sales and marketing, according to Respondology CEO & Co-Founder Erik Swain.
Respondology currently offers two social media-focused software services: Moderate and Discover. The former, Respondology’s featured product, leverages AI to comb clients’ social media replies and hide comments that exhibit one of 30,000 flagged keywords, phrases or emojis — as well as comments of particularly negative sentiment — without notifying the poster. The latter offering, which released late last year, translates comments into insights on replier feedback and conversations.
“The way [Discover] came to be is, we would go talk to our clients… and they would say, ‘Hey Erik and team, you have solved all the spam and abuse for us with Moderate. It’s awesome, but you have our comments and data by the millions in your platform — is there something we can learn from that?’” Swain said. “What do [fans] say about the kits? Our new players? The new schedule that came out? Whatever it might be… We have the data, we have the AI tech chops to produce this product, and so we did.”
Respondology has about 100 billable clients, across which it services 450 brands. Sports leagues or teams represent about 100 of those brands, Swain said, including about one-third of the NFL (e.g., Lions, Broncos) as well as NHL teams and multiple Premier League clubs (e.g., Arsenal). The company also works with athletes on an individual basis.
“It’s really about fan experience,” Swain said of Respondology’s application to sports properties. “They invest millions of dollars in their fan experience. They want to attract new — and more — fans. They want to engage the current fans. You can’t attract new fans, particularly from different walks of life, if you have racism and homophobia and sexual slurs in your comment streams. You’re not going to attract that new audience — and, if you have that junk in there plus the scams and bots, you’re not going to get engagement as much.
“We have found when you clear that out, you get a better social experience for your fans. You protect the sponsors of those teams and leagues. And you get a lot more engagement and a two-way conversation with your fanbase.”
Later this year, Respondology will also roll out a third product called Respond, which takes its current applications a step further by automating responses to fan questions or comments as well. That will round out what Swain calls a “comment activation platform.”
“That means a sports team or league can protect their fans and their brand and their sponsors. They can learn from the fans’ conversations in real-time. And they can engage the fans in a personalized way — but systematically and at scale,” he said.
