#167: Bennett Merriman & Shannan Gove - How Spark and Rosterfy became an industry powerhouse, and why they're investing in SportsGrad

We’ve got NEWS!!

We are stoked to announce SportsGrad have raised a seed funding round led by the founders of Spark Event Group, with a unique collaboration to provide young people a powerful springboard from casual work into full-time careers!

We're super excited to take this idea BIG.

But a few people have asked us… “Who invested in SportsGrad?” 

Introducing Bennett Merriman & Shannan Gove, Directors of Spark Event Group, and Co-Founders of Rosterfy.

Before any of this, they started a company called Event Workforce Group, which eventually merged with another company called Miles Per Hour Event Management into Spark Event Group - you’ll hear from Geordie Miles next week.

When the Melbourne Marathon asked Bennett (21) & Shannan (just 19) to round up 20 friends to remove leftover cans of tuna from the MCG before they would be fined, they saw an opportunity to provide a casual workforce to the biggest events in Australia.

For over a decade these guys paved the way for sport management students to get meaningful work experience at the biggest sporting events in the world, and grew a database of more than 20,000 staff, at 800 events a year.

And now through their business Rosterfy, with third co-founder Chris Grant, they’ve turned their own volunteer management software into a SaaS product to help the biggest clients in the world, including…

The Super Bowl, the FIFA World Cup, Commonwealth Games, and UEFA Champions League.

We absolutely loved this chat learning about all the things that happened behind the scenes and are sure you will too.

We cover:

• How two cousins from Geelong turned an idea into international business
• Early days at EWG and getting their business off the ground
• How they picked up clients, would promise work, and find a way to get it done
• The birth of Rosterfy and their expansion into the US
• Working with the Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, Comm Games and more
• Key learnings from their startup journey
• Vision for the future working with Spark, SportsGrad and Rosterfy complimenting each other

After all the guys have been through, we are absolutely stoked to have their experience supporting SportsGrad.

If you want to learn more about us, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn: Reuben, Ryan

Or if you’d like to ask us any questions, join the SportsGrad Community! It’s THE place to be if you want to get your foot in the door, hire people quickly & easily, or learn from the best in the world.

You can also find us on insta @sportsgrad

And if you're interested in more podcasts related to a certain topic (e.g. Events, High Performance etc.) check out our best picks here: www.sportsgrad.com.au/podcast

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This episode is brought to you by Deakin University, the Official Education Partner of The SportsGrad Podcast.

Find out why their Master of Business in Sport Management is not one of, but the best one in Australia, ranked at #1 at www.deakin.edu.au

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