Lexington, Kentucky-based youth sports and entertainment broadcaster, iHigh has just secured $12 million in funding from Cox Media Group, a company broadly invested in television, radio, and newspaper.
The investment will help iHigh expand into new markets and grow their technological capabilities. In return, Cox Media will be allowed to appoint two new members to iHigh’s nine person board of directors.
iHigh chairman and CEO Jim Host comments on the funding from Cox Media:
“The thing they’ve actually invested in is our technology,”
“If you really think about it, we will be able to have a newspaper that’s a television station that’s a radio station.”
“we have only become dominant in 10 states,”
“To grow, we usually put a field rep in a market to begin talking to youth groups and high schools and others.”
Leon Levitt, Cox Media Group’s vice president of strategy comments on why they decided to fund iHigh:
“We think the iHigh business model and their Production Truck technology is leading edge,”
“We very much like the business model that marries very local video content with the opportunity to aggregate it and sell it nationally.”
Cox Media now holds about a 20% stake in iHigh, which is valued around $60 million. While iHigh has users in all 50 states, their larger goal is to stretch their ten-state popularity over the entire nation. Cox Media owns 15 television stations, 86 radio stations, and 8 daily news papers. I think it is safe to say that iHigh has made a valuable connection by attracting an investor of this magnitude.
