We’ve grown Planet Sport by producing thrilling content that keeps people coming back for more.
We focus on creating the best video, data, audio, editorial, betting or social media experiences imaginable.
Alongside that we help brands and partners thrive as they work with us to delight sports audiences with content.
After several years working successfully in partnership, the Planet Sport Publishing and Yormedia businesses have merged to create a single, exciting tech and media business. We’ve learned a lot, not least that the fans are the heartbeat of everything. We kick on from here!
Ole! Media Group’s publishing arm became a standalone business as Planet Sport Publishing while the main business evolved to become Ole!Connect. Planet Football was re-launched after more than 15 years lying dormant since 2000 and Love Rugby League joined the team. Yormedia became the full-service agency for the Planet Sport Publishing sites.
Back in 2000, a team of enthusiastic Yorkshire music and entertainment fans got together and created a fast-growing web business that soon expanded to over 50 staff and freelance contributors from all around the globe. Just over 15 years later Contactmusic joined the Yormedia stable.
With Sky Sports looking to focus on its own branded titles, Ole! Media took over publishing duties on TEAMtalk and Football365, bolstering their growing network with hugely storied football titles with great fanbases. From here the business started to re-establish the 365 Media Group ethos, setting up a base in Leeds again.
After concluding the sale of TEAMtalk Media, the management team created a new digital advertising media and solutions business back in the UK called Yormedia. Kick-starting its own publishing ambitions, Yormedia acquired Female First – a female-focused interest eCommerce, entertainment and lifestyle magazine site that had started life back in 2001.
Mobile content specialist business Mobimedia had long worked with TEAMtalk Media and in 2013 it acquired the business to create Ole! Media Group. As well as specialisms in digital advertising and offering a full-service marketing agency, the business continued to successfully develop its branded sports publishing operations.
From the 365 Media Group acquisition, Sky had acquired a content and agency operation in Cape Town in 2005. In 2011, TEAMtalk Media was spun out from Sky in an MBO as an independent business, providing content and services for Sky Sports, Sky News and Sky Bet; running Planet F1 and Planet Rugby. The business acquired PA Sport South Africa the same year.
In late 2006 Sky bid £96m for 365 Media Group and the deal completed in 2007 with the betting assets merging into Sky Betting & Gaming (now part of Flutter Group) and the publishing titles – including Football365, TEAMtalk, Planet F1, Planet Rugby – finding a home within Sky Sports, with the smart people and tech the group had acquired going on to develop and grow the next generation of skysports.com and help build Sky Bet’s customer base.
Adding to its sports content portfolio to drive its ukbetting.com and totalbet.com betting businesses, ukbetting paid £2m to take over Rivals Digital Media.The business – rebranded as 365 Media Group - merged all these businesses, added Oddschecker and others, and was operated from Leeds, London, and Cape Town.
Acquisitive AIM-listed sportsbook business ukbetting had already expanded into sports content taking over sportinglife.com plus the UK assets of sports.com and sportal.com. Now founders Peter Dubens and Eric Semel bid £13.7m to take over the ailing TEAMtalk whose live sports radio ambitions had proved unsustainable.
The dotcom bubble burst and after a large decline in share price, several rounds of cost-cutting, Football365 and its remaining sister titles merged operations with Chrysalis’ digital sports arm including football fanzine site network Rivals.net - spun out of US-based network Rivals.com - plus Planet F1 and Planet Rugby.
Sky (then BSkyB) swooped on Sports Internet Group paying £301m for a business that contained Opta, Surrey Sports (became Sky Betting & Gaming) and Planet Football. The latter had been operating club websites for Premier League teams but was merged into Sky Sports and the brand put in cold storage…
With dotcom companies fast becoming the darling of the financial markets IMS plc demerged TEAMtalk in a placing that valued the business at £307m and raised £60m. TEAMtalk made acquisitions including internetsoccer.com and Atlantic 252, which it then rebranded as a UK national sports AM radio station TEAMtalk 252.
Digital Entrepreneur Peter Wilkinson (founder of pivotal ISP Freeserve) had retained PlanetFootball.com when he sold his £22m stake in Planet Online to Energis the year before. Within a year, Planet Football had a £24m valuation as it was reversed into former Leeds United CEO Chris Akers’ Sports Internet Group plc.
Using the F365 template to branch out into 14 new fields like music and er, gardening, Football365’s parent company 365 Corporation plc made its 10 times over-subscribed debut on the London Stock Exchange, raising £75m and going on to achieve a peak valuation of £615m.
Back in the day, dialling a premium rate phone number was the fastest way to obtain exclusive content like news about your favourite football club. Back in 1996, IMS were prime movers in this market having de-merged from William Hill and within a few years moved its football services online for free. The resulting TEAMtalk.com soon became a firm fans’ favourite.
OK, not quite the dawn of the internet but pretty darn early nevertheless, what became 365 Corporation plc was started with the launch of Football365.com. David Tabizel, Danny Kelly, Dan Thompson and Simon Morris founded a site with a winning and amusing style that was pretty unique back then and the original slightly anarchic spirit lives on to this day.
At our core is a team of experienced, can-do sports and entertainment specialists. They, along with some of our titles, are true digital media pioneers.
