The Entrepreneurs Weekly
No Result
View All Result
Sunday, June 1, 2025
  • Login
  • Home
  • BUSINESS
  • POLITICS
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • ENTERTAINMENT
Subscribe
The Entrepreneurs Weekly
  • Home
  • BUSINESS
  • POLITICS
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • ENTERTAINMENT
No Result
View All Result
The Entrepreneurs Weekly
No Result
View All Result
Home Business

How One Firm is Engineering a Sports Revolution | Entrepreneur

by Brand Post
May 15, 2025
in Business
0
How One Firm is Engineering a Sports Revolution | Entrepreneur
152
SHARES
1.9k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In sports, success is easy to quantify on the field — fans and analysts alike rely on everything from points per game to advanced metrics like effective field goal percentage to evaluate performance. But off the field, progress is often less obvious.

Sometimes, it’s as subtle as improving a marketing campaign by just 2%. That may sound minor, but over time, small gains can compound into a major impact.

In 2013, global sports IP revenue stood at $110 billion. Last year, it reached $170 billion. That growth reflects a massive opportunity for companies reimagining how sports organizations connect with fans through data.

One of those companies is Two Circles, led by Gareth Balch.

“We’re engineering sports to be more sophisticated with how they engage directly with fans,” Balch says. “And the compound value of that is 10s of billions of pounds.”

Related: ‘Disrupt to Democratize’: How This Former Art Teacher and Sports Marketer Founded a $75 Million Athlete Media Empire

Where fans meet revenue

The name Two Circles, fittingly, has a double meaning. It can be viewed as a reference to a Venn diagram in which one circle represents the audience and the other represents revenue. But in reality, Balch sees it as a tribute to his track and field career, where he ran the 800m, which consists of two laps around the track.

In simple terms, Two Circles is a sports marketing business that helps grow audiences and revenues for clients across the sports entertainment economy.

“We know fans best,” Balch says. “If you want to know about the consumption or the monetization of sports and entertainment consumers, we know more about that than anyone in the world.”

Two Circles has made it their business to understand how fans interact with the things they love. According to Balch, people spent over three trillion hours engaging with sports content last year, from attending games to watching highlights to reading articles.

Two Circles breaks this data down by market, sport, platform and type of fan and fan segment to understand who is consuming what, and how. They then take that intelligence and apply it to help their clients.

“Say you’re a travel company and you want to get closer to sports fans,” Balch says. “Or you’re the Dallas Cowboys, and you want to convert that fandom to sell more merch. Those are some of the things we can do.”

While Two Circles processes potentially more first-party transactional data than anyone in the industry, they don’t own any of it. It’s all collected on behalf of the customer.

“We’re essentially the living, breathing example of big data,” Balch says. “By analyzing large amounts of transactional data across the industry, we help identify the best next steps and uncover weak points in the business. We process first-party data to provide insights that lead to better fan experiences.”

Related: What It’s Like Putting on a Restaurant Show for 55,000 People

Sports as a direct-to-consumer model

Before launching Two Circles, Balch was working at City Football Group — the largest football ownership group in the world — when he started to notice a major shift in the sports industry.

“Sports have historically outsourced the fan and operated purely as a B2B business,” he says. “But it was evolving into a B2B2C model with direct-to-consumer characteristics.”

At the time, most revenue still came from media rights, sponsorships and brand deals. Even the fan-facing parts of the business — like ticketing or merchandise — were managed by third parties like Ticketmaster, which meant teams and leagues had no real visibility into who their fans were.

Balch saw an opportunity. He imagined a new kind of firm — part consultancy, part data company, part relationship builder — that could help sports organizations take ownership of their fan relationships and thrive in a more connected, data-driven world.

A bootstrapped beginning

The first lap of Two Circles’ journey started in 2011, when Balch and co took their bootstrapped business to its first client, the England and Wales Cricket Board, with whom they still work.

“They didn’t know who their fans were,” Balch says. “So we offered to help.” After securing that deal, Balch took the entrepreneurial leap and resigned from his job at City, which promptly became his second client.

Three years later, Two Circles was acquired by WPP, the world’s largest advertising services group, where the team learned how to professionalize and scale the business. In 2020, they took another leap, joining U.S.-based private equity firm Bruin and entering their next phase of growth.

They’ve since been sold to another PE firm, Charter House, and have acquired three different companies, Kore, Spring Media and Let it Fly Media, in the last three years.

“There are 24 entrepreneurs in Two Circles,” Balch says. “We’ve become a place that empowers entrepreneurs to join our ecosystem — working together as one team, one business, on one shared proposition — to build game-changing sports marketing ventures.”

Every fan has heard the conversation about how analytics have transformed the way sports are played. But according to Balch, they’ve had just as big an impact on how sports are sold.

“You’re at a distinct disadvantage if you’re a sports IP owner and you don’t understand the buying behavior of every fan who cares about you,” he says. “We’re living in a time when we can harness the processing power of billions of humans in seconds. We’ve built the models to do that more effectively than anyone else.”

In sports, success is easy to quantify on the field — fans and analysts alike rely on everything from points per game to advanced metrics like effective field goal percentage to evaluate performance. But off the field, progress is often less obvious.

Sometimes, it’s as subtle as improving a marketing campaign by just 2%. That may sound minor, but over time, small gains can compound into a major impact.

In 2013, global sports IP revenue stood at $110 billion. Last year, it reached $170 billion. That growth reflects a massive opportunity for companies reimagining how sports organizations connect with fans through data.

The rest of this article is locked.

Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.



Source link

Tags: Business ModelsBusiness PlansConsumerData & RecoveryEngineeringentrepreneurFirmGrowth StrategiesinnovationLeadershipRevolutionScience & TechnologySportsSportsRelated BusinessesStarting a BusinessStartupsThought Leaders

Related Posts

This 0 MacBook Air Handles Your Hustle Without Complaints | Entrepreneur
Business

This $200 MacBook Air Handles Your Hustle Without Complaints | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
What Every Brand Gets Wrong About Using AI | Entrepreneur
Business

What Every Brand Gets Wrong About Using AI | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
Improve Your Productivity with Windows 11 Pro for Just  | Entrepreneur
Business

Improve Your Productivity with Windows 11 Pro for Just $15 | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Meet Amir Kenzo: A Well Known Musical Artist From Iran.

Meet Amir Kenzo: A Well Known Musical Artist From Iran.

August 21, 2022
Behind the Glamour: Bella Davis Opens Up About Overcoming Adversity in Modeling

Behind the Glamour: Bella Davis Opens Up About Overcoming Adversity in Modeling

April 20, 2024
Dr. Donya Ball: Pioneering Leadership Solutions for Tomorrow’s Challenges

Dr. Donya Ball: Pioneering Leadership Solutions for Tomorrow’s Challenges

May 10, 2024
Nasiyr Bey’s Journey from Brooklyn to Charlotte: The Entrepreneurial Path to Owning a Successful Cigar Lounge

Nasiyr Bey’s Journey from Brooklyn to Charlotte: The Entrepreneurial Path to Owning a Successful Cigar Lounge

August 8, 2024
Augmented.City Startup Developers Appeal To US Politicians With An Open Letter

Augmented.City Startup Developers Appeal To US Politicians With An Open Letter

0
U.S. High Court Snubs Challenge To State And Local Tax Deduction Cap

U.S. High Court Snubs Challenge To State And Local Tax Deduction Cap

0
GOP Lawmaker Blames Biden For Russia-Ukraine War: Putin ‘Could never have Invaded’

GOP Lawmaker Blames Biden For Russia-Ukraine War: Putin ‘Could never have Invaded’

0
Brad Winget’s Tips and Tricks on Having a Career in Real Estate

Brad Winget’s Tips and Tricks on Having a Career in Real Estate

0
This 0 MacBook Air Handles Your Hustle Without Complaints | Entrepreneur

This $200 MacBook Air Handles Your Hustle Without Complaints | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
What Every Brand Gets Wrong About Using AI | Entrepreneur

What Every Brand Gets Wrong About Using AI | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
Improve Your Productivity with Windows 11 Pro for Just  | Entrepreneur

Improve Your Productivity with Windows 11 Pro for Just $15 | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025
Turn Your Side Hustle Into a 7-Figure Business With These 4 AI Growth Hacks | Entrepreneur

Turn Your Side Hustle Into a 7-Figure Business With These 4 AI Growth Hacks | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2025

The EW prides itself on assembling a proficient and dedicated team comprising seasoned journalists and editors. This collective commitment drives us to provide our esteemed readership with nothing short of the most comprehensive, accurate, and captivating news coverage available.

Transcending the bounds of Chicago to encompass a broader scope, we ensure that our audience remains well-informed and engaged with the latest developments, both locally and beyond.

NEWS

  • Business
  • Politics
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Entertainment
Instagram Facebook

© 2024 Entrepreneurs Weekly.  All Rights Reserved.

  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • POLITICS
  • BUSINESS
  • CONTACT US
  • ADVERTISEMENT

Copyright © 2024 - The Entrepreneurs Weekly

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In