Sports Loft Podcast

Join hosts Yanni Andreopoulos and Charlie Greenwood in conversation with Tom Gayner, CEO and co-founder of Levellr, the platform connecting the world's top musicians, brands, and creators with their fan communities on Discord and Telegram. The growth of community building in sports is one of our trends for 2024, so it was great to catch up with Tom and really dig into the realities of what that me...

In the words of host Yanni Andreopoulos, this week on the podcast we gathered “the greatest minds Sports Loft has to offer” (oh dear!) to discuss our 2023 sports, media and entertainment tech predictions. We explore how these predictions have influenced or failed to impact the industry landscape, shaping the year that's now coming to an end. We ask: were memberships re-imagined by sports teams? To...

This week Yanni and Charlie welcome Paul Hourigan onto the podcast to get his view on the world of sports, media and entertainment investment. Paul is partner at Ryan Sports Ventures, the sports investment arm of the Chicago-based Ryan family, which has a sports portfolio that spans interests in the Chicago Bears and AFC Bournemouth, plus tech businesses like Tagboard. During the episode, we learn...

This week's podcast features Yanni and Andy taking a deep dive into the world of gaming with Pia Schörner, head of digital content creation & BMW Metaverse at BMW, and Erik Londré, co-founder and CEO of Karta – the Sports Loft member which works with sports teams and music artists to build experiences in games like Roblox and Fortnite. We dig into how sports organisations and other brands can...

In this month's Investor's View episode, Yanni sits down with Andrew Costa, partner at RX3 Growth Partners, a consumer growth equity firm co-founded by NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers. To kick off, Andrew gives us an overview of RX3's operational strategy, which focuses on investments in consumer wellness and sports companies. The unique part of the model is the way the group draws on the networks,...

This week we’re discussing the intersection of sports, media and artificial intelligence. Join our host Yanni and founder Charlie, as they sit down with Don White, CEO and co-founder of Satisfi Labs, and Jamie Wilde, head of technology & data science at Greenfly. The main focus of this episode is the transformative impact of AI in the sports and media industry. We'll explore how companies like...

In the latest episode of the Sports Loft Podcast, Yanni is joined by Konrad von Moltke, principal of New York-based investment group, WISE Ventures. Within the WISE portfolio, you'll find familiar names like Sports Loft member companies Tagboard and FEVO, plus former member Slate, and many more across the sports, media and entertainment space. Konrad takes us behind the scenes at WISE, revealing w...

This week on the podcast, Yanni is joined by a trio of industry experts, including Kristen Rodgers, the sports and media partnerships lead at Tagboard, Matt Gentry, 77 Sports Management’s managing director and Andy Selby, Sports Loft’s very own head of strategy. Our first discussion kicks off with a deep dive into how leagues that sit outside of Europe’s top tier are using star signings to grow th...

In the fourth episode of this summer's Investor's View series, we welcome Anthony Bontrager, managing director of West River Group. Anthony's 25 years of experience spans founding his own businesses, holding board positions at a number of portfolio companies, and leading the technology investment practice at West River. Tech is just one of the four sectors the 'investment platform' focuses on, wit...

This week Yanni is joined by Nick Shaw, managing director of EMEA at Greenfly, and Keegan Pierce, managing director for the UK and Ireland at La Liga, as they dissect the dynamic world of sports social media and global pre-season tours. In part one, our guests explain how they’re navigating the fast-changing social media landscape. Nick Shaw outlines Greenfly's role in fan engagement and his tips...

This week Yanni welcomes Jordan Fliegel, managing director of Techstars NYC and Techstars Sports. Over the course of the conversation, Jordan details how Techstars identifies promising startups, and the ways it works with successful applicants to help their businesses develop. The pair also cover the equity terms and ongoing support offered by the accelerator. As well as Jordan's search for “the T...

In this week’s Sports Loft Podcast, we explore the broadcast and sponsorship landscape surrounding the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, NWSL and Super League. To unpick it all, we’ve called upon Jenny Mitton, director and women’s sport lead at M&C Saatchi Sport and Entertainment, who’s worked on some of the biggest sports sponsorships of recent times. Joining Jenny and host Yanni Andreopoulos are...

Our most recent episode of ‘An Investor’s View’  features Michael Spirito, a founding partner and lead investor of Sapphire Sport, the $300m venture firm that counts City Football Group, adidas and AEG among its limited partners. With its first fund, deployed between 2018 and 2021, Sapphire invested in Sports Loft member company FEVO, among others. Now, having raised $180m from many of its origina...

In our new series of ‘An Investor’s View’ podcasts, host Yanni Andreopoulos sits down with Antonio Cacorino, founder and CEO of Apex Capital. In this episode, we explore the opportunities around investing in high-growth tech startups in the sports industry, taking a deep dive into Apex's approach to venture capital – investing with active and former athletes. We ask: what qualities do sports peopl...

Join Yanni as he chats with Nick Pinks, CEO and founder of Covatic, the Sports Loft member company that's revolutionising advertising through its private-by-design ad-tech. First up, the pair discuss its applications for sports, allowing Nick to explain how Covatic empowers teams and rights-holders to foster stronger connections with their audiences through targeted content distribution. The discu...

In this week's Sports Loft Podcast, Yanni sits down with our very own Charlie Greenwood, CEO and founder of Sports Loft, plus Andy Selby, our head of strategy. Together, they reflect on the highlights and key themes raised at the Sports Loft Showcase 2023. After giving a quick recap of the event, we dig into the biggest trend of 2023: the impact of AI. Undoubtedly it will have major repercussions...

“For us, every conversation starts with who are you trying to reach?” These are the words of Erik Londré, CEO and co-founder of Karta – the ‘metaverse studio’ that’s making brands playable by building fan-focused activations inside the most popular virtual worlds.  Karta boasts an impressive client base that includes Amazon Music, Ronald McDonald House, K-pop group TWICE, and Unilever. And in this...

In this episode, Yanni is joined by Simon Oliveira, managing director and founder of KIN Partners, Daniel Kirschner, co-founder, CEO and president at Greenfly, and Ant Ganjou, co-founder of Move.ai and sports entrepreneur. It's an all-star panel to discuss the evolution of athlete brand-building: Simon managed the image of David Beckham at the height of his fame and recently worked on bringing Ney...

In this episode, we take a look back at the recently concluded Cheltenham Festival, one of the biggest fixtures on the UK sports calendar. Our guests are Olaf Gueldner, chief marketing officer at The Jockey Club, Nick Goggans, CEO and founder of PumpJack Dataworks, and Tom Read, chief commercial officer at Spalk. Host Yanni kicks things off this week by asking Olaf about the success of Cheltenham...

In this week's edition of the Sports Loft podcast, host Yanni Andreopoulos is joined by three expert guests to discuss how sports teams and leagues can use a range of tactics to grow their fanbases and audiences. Adrian Wells, chief marketing officer at Harlequins F.C, Don White, CEO and co-founder of Satisfi Labs, and Josh Rose, chief revenue officer at Fevo, explore the ways sports teams and rig...

For the second year running, this year’s Super Bowl was streamed in Japanese via NFL Game Pass – the league’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform. The goal? To bring new fans to the sport and serve existing fans better. It worked, with viewership increasing year-on-year by triple-figure percentages.    Japan isn’t the only country on the radar of Samson Mayall, the NFL’s senior manager of direct-to-...

This week Yanni is joined by Ben Reynolds, CEO and co-founder of Spalk, the remote commentary platform that enables sports from around the world to be localised for different audiences through language, dialect and even team allegiance.  Spalk combines its Virtual Commentary Studio with a Talent Marketplace. This means broadcasters and right-holders have the software to put out broadcast-quality c...

Across Europe and the United States, sports events are selling out. If venues seem packed, it’s because they are: the UK cumulative attendance record was broken last year with 76.2 million people attending sport in 2022. This prompted us to ask two questions. Firstly, has sport bounced back from the difficulties of the pandemic era? And, secondly, what can rights holders and venues do to capitalis...

This year's World Cup might be about to reach its crescendo, but at Sports Loft we're already looking ahead. In this week's roundtable podcast, with an eye on the 2026 World Cup, we ask whether the US can realise its potential of becoming a soccer, ahem, football superpower and debate what's helping and what's hindering its national and domestic teams on their respective journeys. Our panel also d...

Each winter our head of strategy, Andy Selby, sits down with his crystal ball, a highlights video of Hull City’s 13/14 season and a hefty body of research, to predict the major trends that will impact the world of sports, media and tech in the coming year. This also gives us the annual opportunity to look back at the previous year’s predictions and see what came true and what didn’t. In this week’...