PowerPlay Media Executive Chairman Othman Shoukat caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the company’s planned AIM route through Cloudified Holdings plc (LON:CHL), its capital-light sports, media and live events model, and its focus on women’s sport and combat sports.
Q1: PowerPlay Media is intending to come to AIM via a reverse takeover with Cloudified Holdings. Othman, could you just introduce yourself and give us a brief overview of PowerPlay Media?
A1: So, Othman Shoukat, I’m the Executive Chairman of PowerPlay Media. I started my career back in 2007, which feels like a very long time ago. I started at KPMG and spent the best part of 10 years there and specialised in mergers and acquisitions and private equity. I subsequently left and co-founded Salonica Capital, which is an FCA regulated investment firm, and I joined and co-founded that back in 2016.
At Salonica, I lead on our investments within the consumer sports, media and entertainment sectors and have a proven track record of scaling and growing those types of businesses. So, I’ve got approximately around 20 years of experience across the UK, US, and the Middle East with some very specific experience in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, across the sports, media and entertainment sectors.
Most recently, back in 2024, I was involved in the largest mixed martial arts event that took place in the Kingdom to date. It involved the Professional Fighters League and Bellator, which are some of the most prominent mixed martial arts organisations globally. I was involved with working with Sela and the General Entertainment Authority.
So, just a little bit about PowerPlay Media. PowerPlay is an end-to-end sports media and live events business. The team have very unique access into high growth markets like the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. We are currently focusing on two very high growth verticals, one being women’s sports. So, there’s an incredible growth trajectory within women’s sports at the moment, as we’ve probably seen and we focus on that, and then also combat sports as well.
So, we’re focusing on those, given the team’s experience and track record in those areas and currently, we have established partnerships and relationships with various media, broadcast partners, content partners, sponsors.
I think what makes PowerPlay Media quite unique in its value proposition and its business model is it’s very capital light and highly scalable.
Q2: What do you see as the immediate opportunities for PowerPlay?
A2: So, I think for us at the moment is the ability to commercialise and execute against a commercial platform that we’ve already established. We’re fortunate enough to have some long-term partnerships with some really credible and institutional partners and are forecasting around $11-12 million of revenue in the first year with relation to those partnerships and those contracts. So, there’s a maniacal focus on execution against those. I think that’s very, very important.
We also are expanding our distribution. So, currently we have certain geographies that we’ve already expanded into. There’s a focus to now expand that beyond those existing territories and we have active conversations going on in relation to that.
We are also growing our advertisement and sponsorship revenues with some multinational global brands who are looking to access the audiences that we’re currently reaching and tapping into. That’s quite exciting and again, for us, it’s important that we are able to execute that.
We also have a series of live events that we’re currently working on at the moment. I think the immediate focus again for us is to convert those opportunities into contracted revenue, which we anticipate will start to happen as soon as from here on in. We’re also anticipating some of the first events that we’ll be overseeing and working on as early as October.
So, I think for us, the initial focus would be to convert and execute and commercialise and maintain that commercial momentum that we’ve built up.
Q3: You mentioned earlier one of the verticals being women’s sports. Can you tell us more about PowerPlay’s rights to the All Women’s Sports Network that was founded by Whoopi Goldberg and Shaquille O’Neal as an investor?
A3: The All Women’s Sports Network, just to give a bit of context, is the largest women’s sports channel globally. It currently has about 60 countries, which is currently airing into across the world. Actually, PowerPlay has been responsible for delivering about 40 of those geographies.
We currently have approximately one billion households reach across the platform at the moment, and we have roughly around 2,000-3,000 hours of annual content around premium leagues like La Liga, D1 Arkema, etc.
As you mentioned, Whoopi Goldberg is one of the co-founders and you have some prominent investors behind the All Women’s Sports Network like Shaquille O’Neal, Jason Kidd. So, it gives it real endorsement and credibility when you’ve got people who are active and established within sports and media who are backing something like this.
For us, it’s really exciting. PowerPlay’s role is we have global distribution rights to be able to distribute the channel across the globe. We’ve already done that with some of our broadcast partners in the Middle East and Africa. We also have the rights as an events promoter so we will promote events alongside the All Women’s Sports Network.
In our pipeline, we have events attached to women’s adjacent sports and entertainment, which is linked to the All Women’s Sports Network. It’s a very, very exciting and attractive proposition for us because we’ve seen so much traction in women’s sports. We see it as one of the fastest growing verticals within media sports, generally women’s sports.
You’re seeing great audiences. So, you’ve got the Cricket World Cup going on at the moment, but we recently had the Women’s Rugby World Cup and that was the most well attended Rugby World Cup of all gender. So, there’s real traction being built within women’s sport and that’s resulted in increasing sponsorship deals that are coming through, we’re seeing that ourselves. Also, increasing investment from broadcast partners as well and again, something that we’re seeing being on the front line of this.
So, for us, the long-term opportunity around women’s sports across media verticals is a really, really compelling one, and for us within PowerPlay, we’re really, really well positioned to leverage that. So, it’s very, very exciting for us.
Q4: Can you talk us through PowerPlay’s existing commercial partnerships?
A4: I think one of the strengths of PowerPlay, I would say, is the quality of our partnerships and partners.
So, from content partners, we have the All Women’s Sports Network, which we’ve discussed. We also have Black Belt Magazine and the Black Belt+ TV channel, which again has positioned itself since the 1960s as the foremost mixed martial arts platform. You’ve had the likes of Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme. You’ve had Khabib, Ronda Rousey. You’ve got some real, real big names who have attached to Black Belt Magazine.
We also have very, very established institutional broadcast partners as well. So, MBC being one of them. So, MBC is majority owned by the Public Investment Fund in Saudi Arabia and is the largest media platform across the MENA region. So, bigger than the likes of Netflix, bigger than Amazon Prime. So, great from a visibility and viewership perspective for us.
We also have a broadcast partnership with SuperSport, which is one of the largest platforms across Africa. It’s owned by Canal+, and they have a real focus on women’s sport, and they’re trying to build that out at the moment. We’re working closely with them to be able to do that.
We also have relationships and partnerships with sporting organisations. For instance, we’re working with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation with regards to women’s sport. So, that is a very, very important initiative as part of the 2030 vision of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They’re also going to be hosting the World Cup in 2034, so there’s a big long-term partnership that we’re building there.
We also we have relationships with boxing promoters like the Manny Pacquiao Promotions as well for some of the combat sports that we’re actively involved in.
How does that all translate into our commercial model?
All of these partnerships are essentially long-term partnerships, so we’re looking at three to five years. Through these partnerships, we’ll be generating broadcast revenues, sponsorship, advertisement revenues, as well as live events revenue.
So, it really helps us create a diversified revenue model, which is also annually recurring as well, which is central to our value proposition.
Q5: What kind of milestones can investors expect from PowerPlay over the coming months?
A5: Over the coming months, there’s a variety of different things that we’re working on. I think foremost it would be to deliver this AIM transaction, which is in motion at the moment. A key aspect of everything that we’re doing is on execution strategy. So, we are focusing on delivering the commercialisation plan that we’re working on.
We have various different verticals that we’re also building out. We would expect to announce further commercial opportunities and commercial partnerships that we’ve secured. There’s a big focus on our conversion of pipeline opportunities, which we’ve been able to build up over the last six to nine months and converting those into contracted revenues in due course.
As well as that, which previously mentioned, was expanding the distribution reach of the platforms that we’re currently involved in. So, these are active ongoing conversations. They take time, but we’ve been working on them for quite some time so we would expect this to now fall through in the coming months.
I think finally would be for us to deliver the live events that we’ve also got in the pipeline in the process of converting into contracted events. Key to some of these events is that they will be annually recurring events so they’re not being structured as one-off events, but we’re building IPs, so intellectual property, around some of these events. They will then be hosted every year in certain geographies.
So, these are some of the key things for us in the immediate future and what investors can expect from us. Essentially transforming an established commercial platform into revenues, which will be diversified across various revenue streams, but also start to build out the recurring revenue base that will support our medium-term growth and value creation.
