{"id":20699,"date":"2023-09-20T08:20:13","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T08:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/sport-business\/?post_type=podcast&p=20699"},"modified":"2023-09-20T08:20:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T08:20:14","slug":"podcast-founders-keepers-two-circles-gareth-balch","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/sport-business\/podcasts\/podcast-founders-keepers-two-circles-gareth-balch\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: Founders Keepers \u2013 Two Circles\u2019 Gareth Balch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 20 Sep 2023 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Podcasts<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Podcast: Founders Keepers \u2013 Two Circles\u2019 Gareth Balch<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Leaders Podcast<\/a>, Leadership & Culture<\/a>, Sport Business<\/a>, Strategy & Commercialisation<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Two Circles co-founder Gareth Balch and his entrepreneurial journey.<\/h4>\n

Welcome to Founders Keepers, the podcast series about entrepreneurship and business building from the Leaders Sport Business podcast.<\/p>\n

Two Circle co-founder Gareth Balch is the featured guest on this episode.<\/p>\n

Balch represented Great Britain as an 800 metre runner before moving into the world of sports business, first with Goodform, and then in the commercial strategy team at Manchester City.<\/p>\n

In 2011, at the age of 28, Balch founded Two Circles alongside Matt and Claire Rogan.<\/p>\n

Conceived as a digital agency focused on helping sports rights holders develop direct relationships with fans, Two Circles\u2019 marketing mandate matched its business plan perfectly, and it very quickly established itself as the <\/em>data driven agency in sport. It\u2019s gone on to hoover up business across the UK and Europe \u2013 and latterly in the US and internationally too \u2013 and is a serial winner of the Agency of the Year gong at the Sport Industry Awards.<\/p>\n

Since inception, Two Circles has generated annual revenue and profit growth of 54% and 42% per year on average. It was also named as one of the fastest growing companies in The Sunday Times 100 for two years in a row, and its global footprint has expanded to 500 \u2018Two Circlers\u2019 across six cities.<\/p>\n

Two Circles was acquired first by WPP in 2015; and then by Bruin Sports Capital \u2013 which took a majority stake for $42m in December 2019 – and since then has made four significant acquisitions to strengthen its rights and sponsorship sales, and marketing offerings: sports rights-sales agency TRM Partners, ticket strategy and sales company Sports Ink, award-winning sports content agency LiveWire Sport, and the Australian digital transformation company Codeware, in a deal that was announced just days before this interview took place in January this year.<\/p>\n