Best Business Serving Sport
Formula 1
Formula 1 is putting the fan first and bringing F1 to a much wider audience. In 2017 Liberty took over an organisation without a commercial function and in two years we have built a whole new commercial business from scratch. We have made significant progress; increasing our fan base, reaching new audiences and making the sport more accessible to people around the world.
We have enhanced the fan experience through fan zones, fan festivals, partnerships with famous artists, a successful Netflix series, Esports events, launching our first ever OTT service (F1 TV Pro) and introducing new elements to the racing, such as the fastest lap point and TV graphics showing the battles on the track.
2019 race attendance is up +2%, Unique TV reach +10%, engagement with F1 digital products +20% yoy, social media following is + 32% to 24.5m followers, and is the fastest growing sports brand.
Jockey Club Services
Jockey Club Services (JCS) has developed a world class platform of services which is now available to the professional sports market. Marked improvements have been experienced by JCS’s clients in the performance of their clubs and they have achieved savings across many facets of their businesses; allowing profits to be re-invested back into their sport.
With expertise in Ticketing, Finance & Accounting, Payroll, Public Wi-fi, IT Services, Events, Live Music and Procurement, JCS has provided procurement services to five county cricket teams, ticketing to three county cricket teams and the Saudi Cup in Riyadh, live music to The Ageas Bowl and Kingsholm, has created the Rewards4Cricket Loyalty programme being run by Hampshire, Glamorgan, Durham, Lancashire and Worcestershire County Cricket Clubs. JCS’s fastest growing service is finance and accounting where partners include Table Tennis England, England Squash, Badminton England, British Fencing and UK Athletics. JCS has many other NGB’s in the pipeline.
JCS can deliver significant economies of scale to other professional sports organisations, saving them money and providing insights based on experiences which prove a real benefit. These economies of scale will only increase as new partners come on board.
Little Kickers
Established in London in 2002, Little Kickers is the world’s largest pre-school football club, offering classes to the under 7’s through a network of over 330 franchisees in over 30 countries. In addition to providing the 70,000 participants with a fun, positive introduction to sport, the classes also teach valuable early learning skills such as colour and number recognition, sharing and taking turns.
The Little Kickers team are passionately committed to providing as many children as possible with football training, and currently send coaches to the Sparkle pre-school in Malawi every few months to deliver kit, equipment and training. This programme will be extended in 2020/21 with a focus on sustainability. Every child who attends Little Kickers classes receives a football strip – future plans involve moving to strips of fabric made from recycled ocean plastic. Once the UK-based Little Kickers have finished with their strips they will be given the option of sending them to orphanages in Africa where they will be re-used. The kits will be delivered together with balls and goals , by Little Kickers coaches who will train local teachers to deliver the Little Kickers programme.
MediaCom Sport & Entertainment
Going into 2019 we saw an opportunity to capitalize on the disruption that was gripping the sports industry. We recognized that as part of one of the world’s biggest media and communication businesses, we were in a unique position that allowed us to answer the biggest question facing brands, rights holders and talent…..how do we remain relevant in a world where there is so much competition for people’s time. So with ‘Relevance’ at the core of our strategy, we didn’t just transform the way brands invest and execute through sport, we developed a business to help rights holders become culturally relevant media owners and for talent to become culturally relevant personal brands. The response from clients was overwhelming as we saw growth across all areas of our business. But more than financial performance, what gave us a huge sense of pride is how we contributed to the wider well being of the industry through our work in women’s sport and female athletes. We believe that we are in a privileged position to drive meaningful change in the sports industry and we will continue to do our part to shape its future.
PlayerMaker
PlayerMaker is a next-generation player development and coaching enhancement solution with an innovative footwear sensor that uniquely provides technical, tactical and physical performance insights. PlayerMaker uses machine learning algorithms to analyze both player and team performance, with results that are superior to anything else available. Our intuitive device monitors gait tracking and classifies each foot and ball interaction with every touch. Across our team of experts, PlayerMaker has invested over 4 years of data collection and development in order to create the perfect algorithms. The PlayerMaker device has been refined by collecting and training algorithms over 416,000 events, spanning more than 1 5 million running meters PlayerMaker’s physical parameters, like a player’s velocity profile, were proven to be very accurate We are working with football clubs and academies at all levels around the world with our investor being former Arsenal Manager, Arsène Wenger.
StreamAMG
This year, live streaming and OTT specialists StreamAMG firmly staked its claim as the most innovative and creative streaming company in sport.
Already working with a range of football clubs and other sporting organisations, 2019 saw the company extend and diversify its client base, launching services across a variety of sports for national governing bodies, leagues and new clubs in Europe and beyond.
The company has continued to innovate, rolling out the new end-to-end StreamPlay framework that drastically cuts the time and effort needed to launch and run a full sports OTT service.
StreamAMG has also launched market-leading casting SDKs that allow streaming app developers to cast to any connected device. Most recently the StreamTranscribe transcription tool received a major upgrade to support translation, allowing content teams to globalise videos in minutes by generating ready-to-publish captions in over 30 languages.
Alongside commercial successes and product innovation, StreamAMG has maintained its reputation as the best in the business to work with, despite handling the largest, most diverse client base in its 19-year history. By working closely with sporting organisations to align with their objectives and apply specialist industry knowledge, the company retained over 95% of its existing clients in sport.
The Sports Presentation Company
The UK’s leading specialist, global sports presentation agency we produce major sports events with multi-platform content and have been taking fans’ bums off seats™ since 2011 Experts at in-venue technical, creative and fan engagement programs we are known for thrilling & memorable work that surprises & delight audiences in-stadium and engaged on TV / digital platforms at home & on the move Our creative, theatrical, fan interactive, hardware & technical delivery, within the protocols and traditions of each sporting culture, helps International Federations, NGB’s, rights holders and brands turn their high-profile finals and competitions into audience-friendly, immersive, memorable and commercially successful entertainment propositions. From design, planning & management of large scale pre-match shows, celebrating athletes, educating & entertaining fans with killer content and precisely orchestrating victory ceremonies, pageantry or artistic performances our team put social amplification , innovation, fan experience and entertainment at the heart of every execution. We increase sponsor value & profile with live and cross-platform features that blend talent narratives with crowd-friendly visual and music programmes. Whatever the culture, location, language, gender or age of fans, we separate the experience from the performance so all stakeholders get amazing results, whatever their favourite athletic star or team achieve.
Trivandi
Trivandi are global leaders in the planning, delivery and operation of major events and venues in the sporting sector. The founders are a legacy of London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic games and in the 7 years since Trivandi formed, we have worked on 55 projects in 22 countries across more than 60 different sports. Trivandi operate in two main business sectors; major events working on sports events like the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, and venues & infrastructure projects entailing redevelopment and construction of destinations like Twickenham Stadium. We provide services across the full project lifecycle, from the bidding stage through to event/venue operations. We combine strategic thinking with a practical approach.
2019 has been our most successful year to date. Our team has grown across our three office bases and we are proud to have been successful in winning the British Expertise SME of the Year Award. We have worked on more sports projects across more sporting disciplines than before, including the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, Abu Dhabi Special Olympics, Brentford and Twickenham Stadiums and the Lima 2019 Pan American Games to name a few. We move forward into 2020 looking to build on our successes from 2019.
