Miles Jacobson OBE is Studio Director of Sports Interactive, the team behind the best-selling Football Manager series, and creator of the original Championship Manager. This year Sports Interactive is celebrating it’s 20th birthday. At GameHorizon this year, Ian Livingstone will be having a cosy ‘fireside chat’ with Miles about some of his most memorable moments over the years.
If you have a question for Miles, tweet @gamehorizon with the hashtag #askMiles and Ian will ask a selection of the best on stage next week.
Sports Interactive was founded in 1994 by Paul and Oliver Collyer on the back of the success they’d achieved with a game they’d originally created in their Shropshire bedrooms in the late 1980s. That game was first published commercially in 1992 as Championship Manager. Miles first became involved Sports Interactive as a fan of the game, offering his services as one of the early testers.
Miles quickly became an integral part of the team, assuming the role of part-time Managing Director in 1999 before finally taking the helm on a full-time basis in 2001. Born in 1971 and raised in Watford, Miles began his career in the music business, working in the A&R department of Food Records. During his time in the music business (with Food and Polygram Island Music) Miles worked with a number of household names, including Jesus Jones, Dubstar, Shampoo, Blur, Feeder, Fat Boy Slim and The Bluetones. Under Miles’ management, Sports Interactive has grown from a fledgling start-up employing five people to one of the best-known names in UK game development with a staff of 84 and a network of more than 1,000 scouts across the globe. To date, the studio has sold in excess of 15 million games.
Outside Sports Interactive, Miles is heavily involved with a number of charitable organisations, including Warchild, GamesAid, Nordoff Robbins and Special Effect. A former Entrepreneur of the Year (London) finalist, Miles serves on the BAFTA steering committee for video games and the Develop conference steering committee. In 2011 Miles was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to the gaming industry.
