Football Business Awards

BEST BUSINESS SERVING FOOTBALL 2019

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BEST BUSINESS SERVING FOOTBALL 2019

CSM Live

With some of the biggest football events of the 2018/19 season on the CSM Live calendar, we were responsible for delivering the look and feel and creating extraordinary experiences for millions of people around the world.

Working with the major global football federations we helped heighten the fan experience both in person and for those viewing across all the different viewing platforms.

Our work has ensured that some of the most well-known stadiums looked world-class and that brands working in and around football have delivered experiences that truly engage with their customers.
At CSM Live we are also fully aware of the environmental impact of the events industry and are continually looking to challenge ourselves to create more sustainable solutions for our clients.
Our results and longevity with our clients speak volumes and is testament to the incredible work our teams deliver all across the globe.

Imagineear

Imagineear is the leading producer of multimedia content and technology for self-guided and group guided tours at major football clubs, stadia, related museums and sports heritage attractions worldwide. We turn empty stadia into leading visitor attractions, using our content and technology to create visitor experiences that bring venues to life and take fans behind the scenes on non-match days.

Our work helps manage visitor flow, optimise visitor spend and provide real-time data insights. We provide our football clients with everything they need from the technology, including the operational planning, to the interactive, immersive and multilingual experiences that deepen the football club’s connection with their fans and visitors from all over the world.

With our ground-breaking, industry-first Multimedia GroupGuide™ technology, group leaders can now intersperse live commentary with dynamic multimedia content, including 360º videos and VR/AR image recognition, all personalised in the visitor’s own language.

Football clients we are proud to work in close partnership with include Arsenal Emirates Stadium Experience, the London Stadium and West Ham United FC, Chelsea FC, Wembley Stadium, Liverpool FC, Manchester United FC and Manchester City FC, plus new projects currently in development with Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Nielsen Sports

With fundamental changes occurring in how people consume media and audience habits evolving, rights holders, brands and other stakeholders across the global sports industry are grappling with new challenges. The right data and insights are, more than ever, a critical part of the commercial decision-making process. Nielsen Sports has met these challenges head-on: through months of development and drawing on years of experience as a trusted, credible and independent source, we have developed a unified measurement offering – Sports Connect – that brings together TV, social, and online insights like never before.

Portview

Portview is a leading fit-out specialist with over forty years of experience in transforming ambitious design concepts into exceptional interiors for the world’s top brands in sport, retail, business and hospitality.

With projects spanning across the UK and Europe, Portview has carved a niche in setting a series of new benchmarks in stadia hospitality for many of the UK’s landmark venues.
Clients include:

  • Tottenham Hotspur FC
  • Wembley Stadium
  • Arsenal FC
  • London Stadium/ West Ham FC
  • Croke Park
  • All England Lawn Tennis Club
  • Twickenham
  • Royal Ascot

Portview has successfully built long-term relationships with these clients and has reaped the rewards with a 75% repeat business rate and surge in demand from the sports sector for their specialist skills in world-class fit-out.

With a workforce of 105 skilled professionals, Portview prides itself in being the big thinkers who see things differently. They are a team of dynamic problem solvers who set new standards in unrivalled quality and client experience by getting things right, first time, every time.

St George’s Park

At St George’s Park (SGP), innovative technology solutions underpin elite and non-elite training services. The site combines world-leading facilities with the latest technologies to enhance learning, training and performance across national and international sport.

Set in 330 acres of Staffordshire countryside, SGP is best known as the UK’s national football centre and home to England’s 28 national teams. Yet SGP is much more than this: a centre of excellence for sporting talent and innovation, community facility, hub for global businesses and a place for sporting education and training. In recent years, it’s hosted more than 271 elite teams – including Manchester City, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea as well as sides from sports including Ultimate Frisbee, UK Floorball, and British Basketball. SGP has also hosted 3,464 community groups and 421 grassroots experiences.

SGP’s Performance Centre is a training and rehabilitation hub for a number of elite athletes, including Andy Murray, making the park his base for two residential camps, Team Sky who used SGP as their medical camp and England Cricket following the team’s Cricket World Cup win. Priding itself on service delivery and customer satisfaction, SGP continues to deliver high customer satisfaction scores as it enters its seventh year.

StatsBomb

StatsBomb are the top performing analytics and data provider in football. We created our proprietary data operation as existing data was not sufficiently granular to answer the questions that we, and our customers had. With twice the data, our club partners are winning more and mastering the transfer market.

From October 2017, we designed our data spec, custom-built collection and validation software, and hired and trained data collection and quality teams. We integrated StatsBomb Data into our statistical algorithms and analytics software and launched May, 2018. In May, 2019 we fully acquired Arqam FC for further quality and now collect 40 leagues across Europe and the Americas. We have secured customers in the big 5 European leagues and US (MLS). In football but also media and gaming, StatsBomb analytics are widely applied across the industry in performance analysis, opposition analysis, recruitment, fan engagement and customer retention. We are also educating the analyst and data science community of the future by providing Women’s data for free and running training courses in Analytics for Professional Football Our unique data facilitates R&D that enables StatsBomb to stand out from the herd in Football Analytics and helps teams win on and off the field.

WePlay

WePlay was founded with a single mission in mind – to disrupt an archaic sports marketing landscape and to help our partners to effectively engage sports fans and generate measured, incremental revenues from their marketing activity.

After winning Agency of the Year at the Football Business Awards in both 2017 and 2018, WePlay has continued to establish itself as the digital marketing leader for the sports industry.

In the past season, WePlay has grown its revenue by 270% and client base by 75%, meaning that WePlay now serves over 50 clients across the industry. We have also doubled the size of our team from 18 to 35 people. To align with our brand positioning as a premium service provider to the sports industry and accommodate our growth needs, we moved our headquarters from Shoreditch in East London to Central London.

Finally, in the past season, WePlay retained 96% of all 2018 clients, and increased average revenue per customer by 60%.

New client appointments include Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Olympique de Marseille, Premier Sports, Eleven Sports, Wasps Rugby, and UFC.