Gareth Balch, "Data Driven Sports Revenue"
The Sports Entrepreneurs Podcast by Marcus Luer
Evolving Leadership: Balancing Vision and Management
This chapter explores the transition of leadership roles within an organization, emphasizing the shift from direct involvement to strategic management. The speaker highlights the importance of adaptability, vision, and effective communication in guiding teams and clients through organizational change.
Gareth Balch, from an inspiring Olympian, with a data driven approach, taking his passion to building Two Circles into one of the hottest digital sports marketing agency from the UK, conquering the world of sports.
Key Highlights
- Short intro on Two Circles – help grow value of sports – data driven approach
- Gareth early days as a young athlete – wanting to be an Olympian – short distance runner (800 m), representing Great Britain
- Great learning at Manchester City
- How Two Circles got started – Gareth together with Matt Rogan – founding client English Cricket Board (ECB) and Manchester City
- Dream Team, Claire and Matt – first employee Data Scientist
- Data driven approach – source was First party data (from fans to organizations)
- Harnessing data and using it to generate new revenue, solve commercial problems, change fan behavior
- Scientific approach to sales and improving commercial revenue streams
- Examples – from All Blacks to FIFA+, NFL+ to UEFA’s Women’s EURO 2022 – very different services for these clients
- Thinkers and doers – strategic and executioners – from coming up with the ideas derived by the data to delivering the new revenue streams
- Mixed remuneration models based on clients needs
- Business plans for clients – score cards based on deep data and models
- Live video rights – selling media rights in a new way
- Growth story of company over the past 13 years – investors, acquisitions, offices around the world, etc
- Starting with a clearly defined philosophy – build the sports business of our lifetime
- Operating like an athletes as the leader of the business – detailed planning
- Massive learning journey – never sold the business in his mind – just making it bigger and better – focus on delivering for the clients
- Acquired five companies in last few years
- Current focus on certain territories, regions, sports and new clients
About
Gareth co-founded Two Circles following a successful athletics career, representing Great Britain in the 800 metres.
Transferring his passion and energy to the business side of sport, Gareth’s first industry experience involved helping sports organizations such as Manchester City grow their commercial revenues, before in 2011 – at the age of 28 – he created Two Circles, an agency for the digital age, borne out of a desire to build direct relationships with sports fans using data.
In the early years of Two Circles, when Gareth was Managing Director, he led the delivery of client work and helped revolutionize the UK sports landscape through a data-driven approach – recognised in 2014 when Two Circles was named Agency of the Year at the prestigious BT Sport Industry Awards.
Since 2015 Gareth has been Chief Executive of Two Circles, his unique style of leadership and infectious enthusiasm for sport, staff and clients providing the driving force for the company’s rapid growth.
Currently Two Circles has a global network of teams working from London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Bern with a client base of over 150 of the world’s leading rights-owners including the Premier League, NFL, UEFA, Formula 1 and Wimbledon.
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