Chris Allen is Managing Director of Pitch Marketing Group, the first and only 100% employee-owned sports marketing agency. Having joined Pitch as an Account Manager at the end of 2012, during his tenure Chris has played a pivotal role in shaping the culture, creative output and commercial success of the business.
Under Chris’ leadership in 2024 Pitch achieved a record financial year – growing revenue 20% YoY – with the agency also being recognized on Campaign’s Best Place to Work list.
A combination of an unrivalled work ethic, excellent leadership skills and a nurturing management style resulted in Chris sky–rocketing through the agency in his first 5 years, taking on the leadership role of Head of PR in 2017.
As Head of PR, Chris led several game-changing campaigns in sport, including the award-winning Betfair ‘Switching Saddles’ campaign with Victoria Pendleton which saw her transformation from gold-medal cyclist into a competitive jockey over the course of a year, culminating in her racing at the Cheltenham festival. According to Nielsen, this event was the ‘biggest spike in branded coverage they had ever seen’, whilst also landing a female jockey on the front of national newspapers up and down the country, changing the narrative around women in horseracing.
Sports campaigns that drive positive change are Chris’ forte – from delivering countless FA elite and grassroots campaigns, to launching Premier League Primary Stars, to running the Pan-European comms for the NBA and Global Comms for Formula 1, during a period that forever changed F1’s fan following, to overseeing our BT and EE Hope United campaigns to eliminate online hatred from the game of football.
