Anvara wants to be the middleman between brands and the events they sponsor. The company, founded by Andrei Stenmark and Nick Khalili, is building a marketplace that connects advertisers with everything from food festivals to pickleball tournaments and the U.S. Open. The pitch is simple: stop wasting time hunting down organizers and emailing them for details. Anvara handles the search and the arrangement.
Stenmark describes the problem bluntly. “There’s really zero transparency in this market,” he says. “We like to think that we are building the rails and pipes for brands that happen to use these opportunities.”
The Market’s Problem
The IRL economy is a jumble of disconnected events. A brand looking to sponsor a local bar promotion or a sports stadium game has to find the organizer, send an email, and wait for a response. That process repeats for every opportunity. Anvara wants to change that by collecting those opportunities into one searchable database.
“There’s really zero transparency in this market.”
Stenmark sees a parallel in other industries that have been disrupted by marketplaces. Entrepreneurs built empires like Airbnb by creating systems to find temporary housing in apartments and bed-and-breakfasts. Other companies have tried similar work for advertisers, figuring out product placement opportunities in TV shows and movies, or helping smaller advertisers use intellectual property from CBS programs in exchange for promotion.
Anvara’s founders believe their approach can scale the same way. The out-of-home advertising market already generates real money. According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, a trade organization, out-of-home advertising revenue rose 3.6% in 2025 to $9.46 billion.
Why Brands Want In-Person Exposure
The argument for IRL advertising is that people are tired of screens. Stenmark points to the sheer volume of online ads. “You are hammered with ads, left, right, and center, some better, some quite horrible,” he says. “I think showing up IRL is a really strong way to cut through that noise.”
The logic is straightforward. A commercial on TV competes with dozens of others. A banner ad online competes with hundreds. But a branded presence at a live event is a one-on-one interaction. The brand is physically present, and the audience has chosen to be there.
Kalshi, the prediction market, has already tested the model. The company used Anvara to sponsor events tied to the World Cup and football games. Jake Khorozian, Kashi’s events lead, describes the difference directly. “It would take me a long time to get what I would need” without a service like Anvara’s, he says. “They give us access to smaller, more localized things that I would not have come across myself.”
The Brands That Need It Most
Stenmark says certain types of advertisers are the best fit for Anvara’s marketplace. Brands that are always on, always communicating with customers, are the ones who benefit most. Consumer-products giants and restaurants fall into this category. They need consistent, relevant presence.
He also points to brands that want to push new products. Getting consumers to sample something fresh is harder online. A physical event lets a brand hand someone a product and watch them use it.
There is also a broader shift underway. Movie studios rarely sponsor live events, Stenmark says, but that is often because they are focused on launching new films within a very short window and lack the resources to plan for a longer term. He asks a simple question: what if a sports team began listing a six-week rotation at a stadium or sports facility?
“That can empower a new field to come in and show up — frictionless,” he adds.
How the Marketplace Works
Anvara’s role is to gather opportunities and connect brands to them. The company is not organizing the events itself. It is not running the festivals or hosting the tournaments. It is simply the platform that brings buyers and sellers together.
The comparison to Airbnb is instructive. Airbnb did not build the apartments. It did not manage the bookings. It provided a system that made the transaction possible. Anvara is trying to do the same for sponsorships.
The difference is that sponsorships are far more fragmented. A hotel room is a standard unit. A sponsorship opportunity is not. Each one has its own terms, its own value, and its own organizer.
Anvara’s job is to normalize that chaos. The company is building the rails and pipes, as Stenmark puts it, so brands can use those opportunities without having to navigate each one individually.
The Road Ahead
Anvara is still early. The marketplace exists, but it is growing. The company is reaching out to media-buying agencies to forge tighter alliances. That partnership could expand its inventory and bring new events under its umbrella.
The potential is large. Out-of-home advertising is a multi-billion-dollar market. A company that can make it easier for brands to buy those spots could capture a significant share of that spending.
There are also barriers. Event organizers are independent. They have their own processes. They have their own relationships with sponsors. A marketplace can simplify the discovery process, but it cannot control the terms of every deal.
Stenmark acknowledges the challenge. He is betting that the market will move toward more efficient tools. The trend toward IRL advertising is real. People are looking for experiences, and brands are looking for ways to reach them.
What We Know Now
Anvara is a startup with a clear thesis. It is building a marketplace for event sponsorships, a space that has historically lacked transparency. The company has secured at least one customer in Kalshi, and it is now reaching out to media-buying agencies.
The market is real. Out-of-home advertising grew 3.6% in 2025. The trend is moving toward IRL engagement. The technology exists to make it easier.
Whether Anvara can capture a meaningful share of that spending remains to be seen. The company is young, and the competition is fierce. But the problem it is solving is genuine. Brands spend too much time searching for opportunities, then contacting organizers, then sussing out details.
Anvara is trying to fix that. It is building the rails and pipes for brands that happen to use these opportunities. Whether that is enough to win the market is a question only time can answer.
Source material: “Anvara Aims to Build Marketplace for Advertisers Looking for Events to Sponsor,” Variety.
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