- Former Jockey Club CEO Simon Bazalgette appointed as Sweet Nexus Chair to work with Founder and Music Industry Veteran Martin Heath
- Sweet Nexus also appoints Paul Fisher as acting CEO, Trevor Watkins as Chair for Sweet Sport and Stephen Budd as Chair for Sweet Music
- GVS will provide management & investment advisory support to Sweet Nexus ahead of planned investment raise
London, October 5, 2021 – Sweet Nexus, the UK based consumer and fan engagement technology business founded by music industry expert Martin Heath, has appointed GVS (Global Venue Services), the advisory and investment services business launched by Simon Bazalgette and Paul Fisher, to act on its management capability, investment raising and governance. Both Bazalgette and Fisher bring an extensive and successful track record from the sports and music industries to Sweet, most recently The Jockey Club, the UK’s largest racecourse group and one of the UK’s top concert promoters.
Heath, a veteran of the international music and entertainment business, founded Sweet Nexus in early 2020 with the vision to help music artists, athletes and brands enhance their audiences by providing them with the data and CRM tools to harness the power of their networks to create and manage their own direct peer-to-peer networks. Hitherto these relationships have been managed by intermediaries (social media, record labels, streaming services etc) with greater access to sophisticated data and technology tools. Sweet Nexus brings control of personal data closer to the individual fan, allowing deeper and more engaging relationships to be developed with sports stars, music artists, clubs, who can reward fans for their loyalty by sharing in the commercial benefits generated.
Heath, who’s career as a song and music engineer in the 1980s to overseeing no.1 chart topping hits with the likes of Boom the Bass, Depeche Mode, and more latterly discovering The Killers, has been heavily involved in the development of Sweet Nexus’ unique technology and business model. The product is built on Heath’s belief that protection and control of personal data need to be in the hands of creators, who in turn need the necessary tools and support to ensure they can easily manage who has access to their data and how it is used.
Sweet Nexus is the umbrella technology and service provider for a trio of divisions: Sweet Sports, Sweet Music and Sweet Brands, which develop the technology and related operations for clients in these sectors such as e-gaming and charting an artist while connecting powerful brands. The company has made a number of other board appointments in addition to Bazalgette and Fisher, with Trevor Watkins appointed Chair of Sweet Sport, Stephen Budd as Chair of Sweet Music being appointed to the Sweet Nexus Board.
Trevor Watkins, the new Chair of Sweet Sport, is the Head of Sport at the leading international Law firm, Pinsent Masons and also sits on the Advisory Board for GVS. Trevor is well known in the Sports industry and brings Sweet the ability to connect to just about any person in the Sports industry, from club management, athletes and their agents.
Stephen Budd, the new Chair of Sweet Music, has been involved in artist management for over 40 years working with the likes of Damon Albarn. He has also worked with or managed significant UK artists, songwriters and producers as diverse as Heaven 17, Gang of Four and Tony Visconti (Producer of David Bowie, T. Rex, Thin Lizzy). A regular TV pundit (BBC News, Sky News) for the music industry and on policy enforcement issues of artists, managers and promoters, Budd runs one of India’s largest music festivals, NH7 Weekend, and is a co-founder and recent Chairman of the MMF (Music Managers’ Forum).
Heath’s two co-founders, Ryan Mendy and Shaun Marsden are from the corporate finance, technology and music industries. Working in New York and London, Mendy is a strategic growth specialist and marketer and has been in corporate finance for over 25 years. He brings his network as a current board advisory member and investment raiser to such fast-scaling businesses as Mirriad Advertising plc. (the UK’s leading digital ad/brand tech company) and Zilch (UK’s fastest scaling borderless payment fintech company). Marsden is the founder of Catax (UK-leading advisory tax and accounting advisory business) and FutureDJs, the music education service, backed by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Jaguar, Carl Cox, FatBoySlim, Annie Mac and Rudimental.
Martin Heath said:
“Sweet Nexus is ready for the next stage in its development and I’m excited with the board-level team we have put together. GVS will be an important partner in turbo-charging our growth. Simon Bazalgette, Paul Fisher and Trevor Watkins all bring a long term track record of success in the sports and entertainment business, with a strong reputation for integrity, governance and stakeholder management.”
“Alongside the GVS team, this Board and leadership team bring such strong track records and reputations from their industries. Working at the top levels of technology, music, broadcasting, film, horse racing, football, athletics, they bring their powerful networks of potential clients to Sweet Nexus.”
“We see opportunities for Sweet Nexus to not only work with artists and brands, but also to develop new service areas such as intelligent, secure primary ticketing plus concert and event promotion. All areas where the market is crying for innovation and we believe more power can be brought back into the hands of the creators, artists and event owners.”
Simon Bazalgette added:
“We launched GVS into the sports and entertainment business just before the first lockdown, but despite the challenges of the pandemic, there are exciting opportunities out there, and Sweet Nexus is one of the most exciting. Sweet Nexus is a pioneer in advancing technology beyond the current reliance on cookies and social media, and instead focuses on peer-to-peer networks in which the fans are also stakeholders, retain control of their personal data and share in the benefits of the network they help to create.”
“We believe that sports and entertainment stars and consumer brands will see huge opportunities in the technology platform offered by Sweet Nexus as will the next round of investors in the business, and we’re excited that GVS will be part of developing the on-going growth of Sweet Nexus.”
Notes to Editors:
Sweet Nexus/Martin Heath
Martin Heath’s first record label, Rhythm King, was the pioneering electronic label at the forefront of 1990s British rave culture and brought the world bestselling acts including Betty Boo, S Express, Leftfield, Moby, D’Ream and the Warp label. Alongside his record label interests, he was also an early investor in gaming technology, particularly Renegade Software, the largest UK CD-Rom video company of the 1990s, which was sold to Warner Interactive.
The explosion of the Internet in 1997 encouraged Martin to build innovative companies that combined pop culture, and technology made possible by new access to online users and content. In the case of Worldpop, old and new media combined, a Saturday morning children’s show, CDTV, with a curated web site, chart compliance, and a mobile marketing arm deployed first in Ibiza.
In the 2000s Martin moved to New York to run the independent labels division of Warner Music. He signed the Killers to his Lizard King label.
He formed Sweet Nexus in early 2020. Sweet Nexus tracks user events from social networks, and other channels to the point of purchase. By attributing value to all points across the user journey, this enables clients to establish true ROI on their content, customers, and influencers.
Sweet Nexus provides fully managed solutions to enable informed strategic marketing decisions by using real-time analytics that show the performance of content, products, and promotions beyond the first level of engagement. Users are ranked by influence to provide a segmented database of brand advocates. Using permission-based processes, clients can re-target these influencers based on their relevance and effectiveness within their networks. It works with clients to build a people-centric, value-based, influencer marketing platform that bridges the gap between clients and customers. For more information visit www.sweetnexus.co.uk.
GVS
Global Venue Services (GVS) is a provider of advisory, investment, interim management and business services to the sports, leisure, media and entertainment sectors. More information can be found at www.globalvenueservices.com.
Simon Bazalgette was Chairman of the largest UK racecourse operator for 11 years, and Group Chief Executive of its owner, The Jockey Club. Prior to this he spent four years as the founding Executive Chairman for Racecourse Media Group, the start-up venture created to manage the media rights of more than 30 racecourse businesses and now generates more than £100m per annum. He was previously Chief Executive of Music Choice Europe, the first digital broadcaster in Europe, which was jointly owned by three major music groups and BSkyB. Bazalgette is an independent Non-Executive Director of the EFL and was the Senior Independent Director of the successful London 2017 World Athletics and Para-Athletics Championships.
Paul Fisher was Chief Executive and Managing Director of Jockey Club Racecourses until February 2020, having previously been COO of the group. He was on the Board of one of the UK’s leading music promoters, Jockey Club Live and was key to the inception and success of a number of ventures, including Jockey Club Catering alongside Compass UK & Ireland, and Rewards4Racing. Prior to that he was Managing Director of Kempton Park and Finance Director for the three London racing venues of Epsom Downs, Kempton Park and Sandown Park. Before joining The Jockey Club in 2001, Fisher was Finance Director of EFL club, Gillingham FC. He is a Founder Director of City Racing and a Director of SuperSix racing.
The GVS Advisory Board also comprises Trevor Watkins, the Head of Sports at the major multinational professional services firm, Pinsent Masons, and Bernard Kantor, the co-founder of the Investec Group.
Contacts:
Media: Dan Tunna | [email protected]
Investment Round: Ryan Mendy | [email protected]