THE SPORTS ENTREPRENEURS
PODCAST
Oliver Slipper, a true British Sports Entrepreneur, best known for his role building PERFORM (now Stats Perform) and now the Executive Chairman of Pitch International. Lots of great insights into Perform’s business model and his follow up moves as an Entrepreneur with Head Ball and PickGuru to his current role at Pitch International, a leading sports media rights agency in the UK.
Key Highlights
- From playing Cricket to his first job at Accenture. Why athletes bring unique attributes to the business world and learning on the job at Accenture.
- NTL, first project in sports at Accenture. Premium TV – very early days of streaming services in the UK
- Lots of learning from all the mistakes being made in the business, losing money and the flawed business model at the time
- After restructuring the deals with Football Clubs, getting to break even and slowly business model is taking shape
- Winning UK horseracing deal, merging with Inform to launch Perform – Andrew Crocker’s role in setting up the new company
- Perform business model unpacked, doubled revenue every year in next four years – leading to IPO
- WTA deal, switched to buying all rights, not just betting rights anymore.
- Netflix model and distressed media rights market inspired DAZN
- Latency challenges and how to overcome it for bookmakers
- His thoughts on DAZN and current owners end game
- His next moves as an Entrepreneur:
- Masomo, building a great sports game called Head Ball – www.headball2.com, with 200 mil downloads and sold the company after a few years
- Understanding the “K Factor” – key to growing online user base, learning App economy
- PickGuru, how it started during Covid – sports prediction game (App only in the UK)
- Executive Chairman of Pitch International – role since mid 2018 – media rights agency business, leading UK Football, Cricket, Rugby agency
- Four parts to the Pitch business, from content creation to distribution, including sponsorship and Brazil National team Tours
- Some of his investments over the years, from Play Sports Network to Cage Warriors
- Wrapping it up with his non-executive roles, including England & Wales Cricket Board (new event “The Hundred”)
About
Oli Slipper, is the Executive Chairman of Pitch International, the leading Sports Marketing agency.
In a career spanning 25 years, Oli co-founded Perform Group, a pioneer in sports streaming and data and lead it’s IPO and ultimate privatisation.
Subsequently Oli, co-founded Masomo, a mobile studio focused on sports games which was acquired by Miniclip. More recently Oli, co-founded PickGuru, a sports prediction app. In the last 10 years Oli has been an active investor in the sports, fintech and consumer tech space including: Global Cycling Network (GCN), Grabyo, Marshmallow, Cage Warriors, Sixes amongst others.
Oli sits on the Board of the Professional Darts Corporation and Oval Invincibles.
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