Q&A: Inside CheckdMedia as the new football season kicks off

Born in Manchester, CheckdMedia launched in 2012 and has been growing consistently for six years. Moving on to their seventh season in 2018/2019, CheckdMedia co-owners Jamie Knowlson and Lee Struggles tell us about last year’s achievements, and how they intend to lead the business in the future.

EGR Marketing: What are the stand out moments for CheckdMedia last season?

 Lee Struggles (LS): We had a great year in terms of moving the business forward. We made our first acquisition in Oddschanger, which has proven to be a huge success. We also re-designed all our brand websites and launched our new look FootyAccumulators.com site, which we’re pleased with. We also invested in athlete sponsorships including boxer Charlie Edwards and recently put pen-to-paper with the sponsorship of Altrincham FC.  Less visible, but of equal importance, was the investment in our management and leadership team. All of the hard work came together when we were recognised as one of Sky Bet’s trusted partners and also featured in EGR’s Power Affiliates.  I’m a Sheffield Wednesday fan, so a great year for the business made up for a poor season after finishing fifteenth in the Championship.

EGR Marketing: What is the headcount at CheckdMedia now following recent growth?

Jamie Knowlson (JK): We now have over 40 in the CheckdMedia team – strength in depth across all key positions, a bit like the team I support, Liverpool. We’ve always had a strategy of recruiting young folks with real potential to develop within the business, and this has really driven our growth. As part of our plans for the new season, we have recently hired Sam Turbitt from Catena Media as content manager and April Jones as account manager in our commercial team. Both will bring experience and new skills to the CheckdMedia team. Sam’s also great at karaoke, so nights out should be entertaining.

Lee Struggles and Jamie Knowlson

EGR Marketing: Why is CheckdMedia a great company to work for?

 LS: We are a young and innovative company – the noisy neighbours, literally. Our vision, culture and open leadership style makes for a vibrant office environment where everyone is pulling in the same direction, and everyone knows they can progress – there’s no room for plodders here. Everyone has regular personal development meeting, with targets and goals set for their ambitions. With the office pretty much open 24/7, we work hard to create a team-based culture, so we have regular socials, a free bar for the World Cup, a trip to Chester races and a mad weekend to Dublin. We want people to be creative and imaginative in their approach. CheckdMedia is not a massive corporate company, meaning good ideas can be put to action easily. We believe in an open door policy and with an ‘in-house’ team of developers and content creators, ideas quickly become reality.

EGR Marketing: What is your management style at CheckdMedia?

 JK: We’re a dynamic, fast growing business, and we’ve kept the startup ethos as we’ve grown. Our management style is to be present on the floor, leading from the front in a hands-on way, to inspire, encourage and energise everyone. We are more Klopp than Mourinho, with a bit of Pep and Dyche thrown in. Lee and I set the vision and the direction, but we have a number of employees with expertise in the key areas of the business, and we let them run the day-to-day agenda. To name a few, the newly-appointed management team will be made up of Mike Whittle, who came to CheckdMedia from Betfred four years ago, and Will Tyrell, the founder of our Oddschanger brand, who is now head of commercials. They will work with Sam Turbitt who I mentioned earlier. These guys are the heartbeat of the business; they are passionate, ambitious and talented. Our business is all about our people.

EGR Marketing: What are your objectives for next season?

 JK: We have a clear growth strategy for the UK, after the turbulence of the last year in the market, we’re in good nick, so it’s now time for us to turn our attention overseas. Our brands get a large amount of traffic from Africa, USA, Asia and the rest of Europe. As a business it’s important to cater to what our audience wants and therefore we need to look at monetising our worldwide traffic. This will be a major objective for next season with huge potential. Our first venture will be a focus on Africa. It sounds ambitious, but we know we can do it.

 EGR Marketing: What’s the future looking like?

 JK: We’re still learning about the opportunities, we’ve got some new ideas and that’s what excites me. It’s important for us to deliver what our audiences want and whether this is tapping in to non-league football like our Altrincham FC sponsorship and bringing our brands on to our fans level, we’ll give it a go. On a much bigger scale, looking at moving the CheckdMedia brand worldwide and working with some established global brands will be a huge focus for us. We won’t be in the office much.

LS: We are currently in the process of launching our first standalone pay-per-click (PPC) site, www.TheBonusLounge.com. As well as creating a new site, we are going to build our existing brands to have new bespoke sites like Footy Accumulators. We have this on our radar to be ticked off by the end of next season. This should be achievable with us having an in-house development team. As well as this, another clear focus moving forward is our own content creation. We recognise the huge importance and growth that content marketing has. With our newly created content team, we are investing in experts and equipment including a green screen to be able to produce unlimited and exclusive content not only for our communities but also for our partners.