Matt is a sports lover from country Australia, currently living in Singapore as the Managing Director of World Table Tennis.
Recognizing that a career as a sporting pro was well out of reach, Matt embarked on his sports management journey by completing a Bachelor of Sports Management at Bond University on the Gold Coast. A 3-year stint at Table Tennis Australia followed, which exposed him to the National Governing Body world and taught him the basics of national sports administration.
The bright lights of Europe got Matt excited as he voyaged over to London and started working as a manager at a members-only private tennis club in upmarket north London. Being inspired by Sydney 2000, Matt desired to get into the Olympic Movement and got his chance with the International Modern Pentathlon Federation (UIPM) in Monaco, setting up and leading the communication team. This role was supremely satisfying as it involved positioning a traditional Olympic sport in a clustered market and gave Matt great experience inside the world of Olympic International Federations.
After four years in Monaco, Matt was ready for a new challenge and set off to the far east for a role at the International Table Tennis Federation in communications and media based in Singapore. After 5 years in the role, and significantly improving all the ITTF’s global media metrics, Matt moved into a Marketing & Commercial role as Marketing Director. In this time, Matt and the leadership grew frustrated with the way other similar-sized sports were flying ahead of table tennis in terms of commercial revenue, prize money, and overall fandom of the sport, so a change of structure was needed.
After studying the market with external professionals and looking at how bigger, more established, commercially successful sporting properties were running their businesses, a new model was proposed to run the professional global series of table tennis in an arm’s length, commercially focused company called World Table Tennis (WTT).
As WTT was launched in 2021 at the height of the pandemic, Matt faced the biggest challenge of his career: ensuring that not only the company survived in difficult financial times with border closures and restrictions but also managing a new and growing team of professionals in a work-from-home environment and ensuring they are motivated and engaged in the new corporate culture and vision.
WTT has successfully navigated through rough seas, resulting in more than double the revenue compared to the old model thanks for the hard work of the leadership and the WTT Team whose hard work and dedication ensured the grow of the company. In addition, the calendar is starting to fill up with exciting events across all corners of the world, offering a new, vibrant, and fan-focused product. The WTT platform is now set up for success and holistically grow the sport of table tennis together with the global table tennis community which Matt is very proud to be a part of.