Sports Loft Podcast

Charlie is joined by Scott (DJ Skee) Keeney, CEO and Co-Founder of The Realest, to talk about the untapped revenue stream sitting inside every sports organisation - Memorabilia. Using its on-site authentication technology, The Realest has transformed sports memorabilia from a market previously plagued by fraud into a structured, high-value marketplace. Their platform handles every step of the proc...

“Every company now has a TikTok strategy… yet more people now use mobile wallets than TikTok, so why don’t you have a wallet strategy?” Eric Senn, CEO and co-founder of Badge, joins Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast to discuss why the mobile wallet is quickly becoming the most powerful interface for fan engagement. With mobile wallet usage now outpacing platforms like TikTok, Badge has built the...

Will Pithers, Strategic Partner Manager for sports at Meta, joins Andy and Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast. Having previously work at City Football Group , Will helps teams, leagues, federations, athletes and creators optimise their content strategy across Meta’s platforms. With user behaviour shifting from public feeds toward private messaging, and short-form video dominating content strategy,...

In the latest Sports Loft podcast, Andy and Charlie are joined by Victorien Tixier, CEO of Scoreplay. Fresh off the announcement of their $13m Series A funding round, ScorePlay have been seeing huge success onboarding new clients. So we wanted to discuss how they see the content market evolving, their future product strategy and to get some very specific examples of how sports organiastions are us...

Jonny Keogh, UK&I Sports Lead at YouTube joins Andy and Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast. Having previously worked at Sky, Jonny now helps major rightsholders and sports creators make the most of YouTube. So we wanted to dig into what’s coming from YouTube, who is being really innovative in their use of the platform and get some specific examples of how teams are using it to drive revenue. S...

Finn Bradshaw, Head of Digital at the ICC, joins Andy and Charlie on the Sports Loft podcast. Having worked previously with Cricket Australia and in tennis at the Australian Open, Finn now drives the digital agenda at the ICC and has events such as the Cricket World Cup to look after. So we were keen to dig into how the ICC is looking to innovate and adopt new technologies.   In our latest episode...

Courtney Jeffries is CEO of virtual events platform, VRTL. She describes herself as a “recovering Sports Exec” having worked at the Raiders, Pac-12, MSG and then moving into startup life at Satisfi Labs. VRTL is used by the likes of Atlanta Falcons, ESPN, NY Rangers, Tottenham Hotspurs and Wolverhampton Wanderers.   In this episode with VRTL’s CEO:   The revenue opportunity from driving engagement...

With Yanni away in Hawai'i (working on the IRONMAN World Championship, rather than competing in it) Charlie took the reins of the podcast this week, welcoming Alex Kerr, CEO of Trajektory, to chat about sponsorship analytics in the sports industry. We’ve been tracking his company – which uses advanced AI and a dynamic valuation method to deliver more accurate media analytics – for a while, so it w...

In this episode of the Sports Loft Podcast, hosts Yanni Andreopoulos and Andy Selby are joined by Sam Schmelzer, Partner and COO of ADvantage VC, to dig into early-stage investment in sports-focused technologies.  ADvantage focuses on three areas of the sports tech ecosystem: fan engagement, the connected athlete and derivative sports, which spans fantasy, gaming and e-sports. As such, the its por...

This week, Yanni and Andy chat with Suzanne Kirkland about how the company uses AI to separate audio into its “stems” or component parts, giving organisations more control over their audio and video assets. In sports, that means tweaking levels or replacing unwanted sounds to make content libraries more usable. But the tech, which was born out of a love for homemade karaoke, also has powerful appl...

In this week’s episode of the Sports Loft Podcast, Yanni and Charlie sit down with Shubh Jagani, head of enterprise solutions at OpusClip, the AI startup that can turn long-form videos into viral clips with just one click.  Today, every organisation – from sports teams to media giants – needs a constant stream of engaging social media content. OpusClip makes that possible, helping clients like Vox...

On this episode of the Sports Loft Podcast, hosts Yanni and Charlie sit down with Antyush Bollini, COO and co-founder of OneCourt, a groundbreaking company making sports more inclusive for fans who are blind or visually impaired. OneCourt has developed a haptic device that allows fans to feel live action through trackable vibrations, revolutionising the way sports are experienced. The company, spu...

In this episode, the Charlie and Yanni chat with Bob Thomson, the founder of Storyteller, a company that enables brands to integrate vertical video stories into their apps and websites. They discuss the rise of vertical video formats like Stories and Reels, the power of narrative in sports, and how Storyteller helps sports teams and rights holders deliver engaging content to fans. Storyteller is a...

In this episode, Yanni and Charlie chat with Kamal Mistry, CEO of Arcturus, a company specialising in volumetric video – which allows for the capture and display of three-dimensional spaces and objects. We were blown away by Arcturus' demo at the Sports Loft Summit, which put the viewer in the middle of a wrestling match. So we've been keen to delve further into the origins of Arcturus, the concep...

This week Yanni and Charlie sit down with Vince Ircandia, CEO and founder of Stellar Algo, a company transforming how sports organisations understand and engage with their fans, using data analytics. Vince explains how Stellar Algo unifies fan data from diverse sources – including venues, e-commerce, social media and marketing channels – into a single, actionable view, and shares his journey from...

In this episode, Yanni and Charlie chat with Maninder Saini, head of growth at Twelve Labs, a company that uses multimodal AI to bring human-like understanding to video content. We had Twelve Labs on stage at the Sports Loft Summit, so in this conversation we dig deeper into the applications of this technology in the sports and media entertainment industry, particularly in helping rights holders o...

This week’s guest on the Sports Loft Podcast is Michael Proman, managing director of Scrum Ventures – a seed stage investment platform that counts large Japanese corporations among its investor base, and uses that network to grow its investments and help them break into Asia. Founded by Japanese serial entrepreneur Tak Miyata in 2013, Scrum began life as a generalist VC firm, “investing in pretty...

On Wednesday May 8th, we held the Sports Loft Showcase 2024, where we featured twelve incredible tech companies that we believe the industry needs to know about. In this second episode of our two-parter on the event, Charlie, Andy and our MC for the day, Yanni, look back at the Summit and discuss the presentations from the companies that can broadly be defined as operating in the content and immer...

On Wednesday May 8th, we held the Sports Loft Showcase 2024, where we featured twelve incredible tech companies that we believe the industry needs to know about. In this episode, Charlie, Andy and our MC for the day, Yanni, look back at the event and discuss the presentations from the companies that can broadly be defined as operating in the fan engagement space. They are: Monterosa Storyteller Sa...

“The 26.2 miles of London streets from Blackheath to the Mall are, in my opinion, the most incredible experience on the planet,” says Charles Juba, group director of digital & technology at London Marathon Events (LME) and this week’s guest on the Sports Loft Podcast. Our conversation took place shortly after 53,000 people had completed the 2024 TCS London Marathon the previous weekend, raisin...

This week Yanni and co-host Charlie chat with Sam Renouf, CEO of the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO). Sam joined the organisation in 2019 has been central to the organisation’s strategy and development since. We kick off the conversation by setting the scene, with Sam discussing the inception and evolution of PTO, including its recent partnership with World Triathlon. He digs into the...

Football in the US is growing – fast. But Major League Soccer has a long way to go to catch up with the likes of the NBA, MLB and, of course, the behemoth of the NFL. To do so, the league is turning to tech in order to supercharge broadcast, boost fan engagement and even get more kids playing the sport. In this episode of the Sports Loft podcast, Yanni and Charlie sit down with Chris Schlosser, th...

This week’s episode delves into the intersection of sports, technology and sponsorship with industry experts Jason Saiban, a partner at Charles Russell Speechlys, and Sally Moore, the global sponsorship lead at Sage. The conversation focuses on the evolution of sports sponsorship, exploring how new technologies are providing additional rights and diverse activation opportunities for sponsors. Our...

In this episode, Yanni and Charlie talk to Tom McDonnell, CEO at Monterosa, the platform that is helping teams and leagues wrestle the fan engagement experience away from social media or third party platforms, and onto their owned and operated websites and apps.   We’ve been approached by lots of companies try to nail digital fan experiences, but in the last 12 to 18 months we’ve seen Monterosa’s...

In this episode of our 'Investor's View' series, Yanni and Charlie chat with returning guest Jasmine Robinson. Formerly of Causeway, Jasmine is now co-founder and managing partner at Monarch Collective – a $150 million fund launched in 2023 that invests in women's sports teams and leagues. Jasmine's partner at Monarch is Kara Nortman, who co-founded NWSL club Angel City FC, and the fund has alread...