Dear Friends,

As many of you know, here at Pitch International we don’t like to indulge in too much self-publicity, preferring instead to work behind the scenes, doing the heavy lifting, enabling our clients and partners to take the well-deserved plaudits.

Today though we re-launch our website and during the final review yesterday, it struck me what a brilliant business this is. PS…the fact the old website was so bad may have been the reason there has been so little chest thumping.

I’ve been at Pitch for three years and in that time a month hasn’t gone without a story or social media commentator questioning the role of the agency — suggesting it’s an outdated model. They couldn’t be more wrong in our case….

We pride ourselves on being the best. We: Evaluate, Package, Finance and Sell Media Rights. Our greatest investment in the past few years has been in the people and systems needed to support our growth. For the very few global AAA rights owners building a scaled-up in-house team makes sense but beyond this small handful of global powerhouses, the economics rarely stack up.

Our strategy, insights and data team is now over 10 strong, providing our sales people and rights partners with a depth of insight unrivalled in this space. Knowledge is power in media rights and this is why we continue to deliver for clients. The last couple of years has taught us that we aren’t in a global bull market for media rights anymore. In bull territories or regions, we’ll maximise upside thanks to timing and packaging strategies supported by data and key relationships and in bear regions we’ll minimise the downside.

Thanks to the strength of our balance sheet, we have never been better placed to provide financial security to our rights partners in the form of guaranteed rights fees or by becoming a primary buyer. The last year has taught us the importance of having strong, loyal and financially robust partners and we haven’t missed a single payment, taking the stress out of a very difficult time for the sports industry.

Away from our media rights advisory and sales work, we have a world class events business. Understandably, this has been a bit slow in the last 18 months, but we’ll bounce back quickly and are working on some brilliant events for 2022 and beyond, including a March 2022 Qatar International Men’s Football tournament in partnership with the QFA, a Brazil v Argentina Superclasico and the return of Star Sixes.

Our original programming division is at the top of its game, and off the back of some critically acclaimed hits for Netflix and Amazon Prime in last year, we have a very full slate of green lit sports docs in production…more to follow.

Our sponsorship and player representation businesses are both in growth mode, again with data at the heart of everything we do. Sponsorship-wise we are working on some exciting mandates and are buoyed by the new digital-first market entrants who have entered the market since the pandemic, driving a shift in thinking that marketing is all about social media.

So forget the chino wearing, roller deck wielding agent of old. This is a dynamic, tech-driven, data-led organisation, loyal to the core, oh and by the way we still like to have fun, so when it warms up or we’re allowed inside come and join us for a proper lunch.

Check out the new website — www.pitchinternational.com and do get in touch.

As ever, Oli Slipper — Executive Chairman