One of the things that we look for in the companies at Sports Loft is a management team that operates with a global mindset. We want to see companies who have products that can be successful in multiple geographies and sales teams that want to embrace the fact that whilst national differences exist, sport and media is a genuinely global business.
However, growing a global operation is not easy. Should you build in your domestic market first and then think about selling internationally or should you go global from the start? Can you sell from your home base or do you need “boots on the ground?” How do you get to really understand the structural differences between sports in different countries? - college basketball is set-up very differently from international tennis and different again from the IPL.
In this podcast, we are joined by Nick Goggans, CEO of Pumpjack Dataworks, whose clients such as Williams F1 and World Table Tennis are mainly outside the US despite the company being based in Texas. We are also joined by Covatic’s CEO Nick Pinks whose clients include global media owners such as Bauer. While Covatic is based in the UK, increasingly the company is selling into the US. They discuss their experiences of building global sales operations, the cultural differences in the sports industry between US, Europe and Asia and what type of people you need to hire in different markets.
Featuring
Guests
Nick Goggans
Nick is the co-founder and CEO of Pumpjack and has over 12 years experience through operating and investing in analytics businesses in Sports and Entertainment.
Nick Pinks
Nick founded Covatic in 2016, having previously worked as BBC technology transfer manager, where he gained an insight into the challenges of using technology to improve consumer experience.
