As Chief Technology Officer of Planet Sport Group, Tim Lewis leads tech teams that build digital products that entertain and engage over 25 million sports fans every month. During his 25-year career, Tim has guided a wealth of successful cross-functional teams to align technology strategies with overarching business goals at innovative sports media companies including Sky Sports, DAZN, Sporting Life, and Stats Perform.
The UK has been a global leader and pioneer in sports-tech innovation in a lot of areas, but certainly in the culture of statistics and sports data, which we’ve exported far and wide. This was particularly evident in the transition of sports betting and gaming from the high street to online in the late 1990’s.
The UK is a global leader in looking at new ways of using data that's beyond just a table and a corresponding set of results. We delve deeper: what insights can we get from sports data, and how is that valuable to different segments of the market?
We're seeing interest in data visualisation pieces and how you can draw interesting insights beyond the game itself, resulting in fan-to-fan engagement and conversation around stats you can use to back up your own in-pub arguments against your mates.
But how has that global leader status been achieved?
The UK is particularly proficient at developing organic ecosystems, fuelled by a shared community of practice and collaboration. This is true for most tech verticals, but it's particularly pertinent to the sports tech world.
This is super apparent in Planet Sport Group's home city, Leeds. We've got massive homegrown companies like Sky Sports, Flutter, DAZN, and Opta that have developed into big global brands, which is a really strong pull factor for the city.
Because of that, there's a lot of talent here, which provides sturdy foundations to build upon. We’ve got strong FinTech and HealthTech businesses, which also helps. This strong northern presence has influenced the government to start moving departmental resources to areas like Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle.
The culture in Leeds, particularly, but I've experienced it across numerous UK cities, is one of proactive collaboration and support—always looking to lift up rather than punch down. It’s fantastic, and I think, partly, that's why the UK's tech sector is enjoying substantial growth.
No one's going to give away their trade secrets, but there's real value seen in collaboration. We’re all incredibly privileged to be part of it and play an active role in our community.
Of course, capital cities in pretty much every country are where most trade happens—there's a reason they were the capital cities in the first place—and it's difficult to compete against hundreds of years of momentum.
It’s not going to happen overnight, but there are regional areas of excellence in the UK outside of London. For example, Birmingham with the successful VoxPopMe, an AI-powered qualitative insights platform; Bristol with Immersive, who specialise in cyber resilience technology; Manchester with XR training firm Rezzil; and Glasgow with Alba Orbital and their picosatellites, are all achieving incredible things.
The UK is emerging as a real leader in decentralising its tech hubs across the country. This is super important for engendering growth as it makes the sector immeasurably more accessible.
Higher education also plays a massive part in the UK's sports-tech leadership. If you're to realise sustained growth, it's imperative to pair a leading industry with education. A strong university scene and the universities themselves doing interesting, innovative work is essential for driving regional development with longevity.
The UK is globally renowned for its education infrastructure and prowess, and there's an incredibly strong correlation between the locations of the UK's biggest university cities and our tech hubs.
Additionally, strong advocates constantly shouting about the growth of the players in the scene are important because there's lots of other places doing the same thing, and healthy competition is always a strong driver of growth. Networking community Digital Sport North, for instance, is fantastic at shining a light on the fabulous things people and businesses are doing in the north's tech sector.
We absolutely should be shouting about the UK's development, not just because we want to work with others, but because ultimately it uplifts us all. We are stronger together, and we should leverage our shared expertise to grow something bigger than ourselves.
Last, but certainly not least, the UK is a group of four proud, high-performing sporting nations. We are home to the most watched football league in the world, four elite rugby union nations; we excel at Formula 1, cricket (not so much recently), tennis, golf, and a whole wealth of other sports. It's no surprise that this translates into the business world, with smart people driving innovation in sports they are intensely passionate about.