Sports Loft Podcast

Where Sapphire Sport will invest its second fund

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 original partners, plus some new names, Michael and the team are on the hunt for new opportunities.

Yanni and Michael explore where Sapphire Sport hopes to find its next round of investments, how the firm’s thesis is being employed in the current market, and what advice Sapphire is giving to founders across its portfolio. 

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This episode was recorded in May 2023

Apex Capital: investing with the world’s best athletes

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 people have that make them good investors?

Among plenty more, Antonio gives us his thoughts on the evolving web3 and gaming sectors, offers us his pick of exciting growth areas, and explains what he looks for in the businesses Apex invests in.

This episode was recorded in April 2023.

How Covatic’s privacy-first approach to advertising can disrupt sport

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 discussion then moves onto the impressive strides clients like Bauer Media Group and Comcast NBC are making by building Covatic into their advertising strategies. Nick opens up about what it's been like to work with such giants of media, and the feedback they've received along the way.

Finally, on the back of its recent Series A, the pair also discuss Covatic's growth strategy, Nick's personal development as a founder, his approach to building up the team, and what the future holds for the business.

Our takeaways from the Sports Loft Showcase 2023

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 the sports industry, so it was fascinating to see how AI is already being used to solve problems and create opportunity. In the podcast, we discuss how companies like Move.ai, Satisfi, Greenfly, FEVO, and Spalk are using artificial intelligence to do just that.

Fundraising is another significant topic the tech industry is wrestling with, and our panel addresses misconceptions around the availability of VC funds, highlighting successful fundraising efforts. Finally, the Sports Loft team explores the opportunities for women's sports to benefit from technology, focusing on how innovative solutions can support women's teams and leagues

Making brands playable with Sports Loft’s newest member

“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 week's podcast, Yanni chats with Erik to learn about the process of developing award-winning immersive experiences for these brands and organisations on platforms like Roblox and Fortnite.

Over the course of the episode, Erik introduces Karta and his own background in esports, explains his thinking around how to best engage fans in these spaces, and discusses his vision for how all brands – across the sports and entertainment ecosystem – will soon have a presence in the metaverse.

Athlete brands: why authenticity is key from social media to the metaverse

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 Neymar Jr into the Fortnite and Call of Duty games. Greenfly, run by Daniel, allows athletes and their teams and agents to share and distribute short form social media content quickly and efficiently. And Ant's Move.ai is able to accurately capture and digitise human movement using basic cameras, smart software and AI, opening up a raft of applications – from licensing athletes' signature moves to embedding them in films, video games and more.

Throughout the course of the episode, the panel explores the value of authenticity, the impact of social media – how it's changed the relationship athletes and celebrities have with the media and their fans – and the ways in which public figures will use the 'metaverse' to further extend their brands.

Marketing sports events with deep historic ties

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 this year and how his team approach marketing a sporting event with deep historic roots. The panel then dives into the challenges faced by organisers of such events, why knowing your audience can help to improve the fan experience, and how data is crucial for developing successful marketing strategies.

Our guests also talk about the importance of broadcast and streaming for growing the sport and finding new fans, as well as the potential of audio and commentary in building relationships with fans and racegoers.

Finally, as ever, we ask our guests to share their favourite recent sporting moment.

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Turning a crowd into a fanbase

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 rights-holders can attract new fans, including big one-off events, sports and sponsorship crossovers and live overseas activations.

They also discuss the imperative for sports and teams to attract a younger and more diverse audience, as well as the challenges that come with selling to broader audiences in addition to superfans. The guests draw on their personal experiences, including the recent Harlequins Big Game 14 at Twickenham versus Exeter Chiefs.

The NFL’s plan to develop global football fandom

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-consumer. Game Pass delivers year-round NFL content to fans across Latin America in a range of local languages. Germany, a hotbed of American football fandom, has also been trialled. In total, fans can access NFL content in 200 countries around the world.

Behind each of the local language streams is Spalk – the remote commentary platform that makes broadcasting multi-language sportscasts simple. In this episode, Yanni is joined by Samson and Tom Read, chief commercial officer at Spalk, to discuss the partnership, the NFL’s approach to developing global fandom and how direct-to-consumer plays a pivotal role in the league’s goal of taking football to the world.

Going global: localising sports for millions of fans

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 commentary from anywhere with an internet connection, and have access to a vast array of sportscasters spanning tens of sports, languages and regions.

Today Spalk boasts more than 2,500 commentators across some 50 countries, covering 30+ sports, including some of the biggest events on the global calendar.

We catch up with Ben to hear about the successes of 2022 (including the football World Cup), the potential of remote commentary for providing niche audiences with unprecedented levels of personalisation, and how Spalk customers are turning what was previously a cost centre into a revenue stream.

In this episode we reference:

• Sports Loft – Want to take a sport to new markets? Speak their language