Double Olympic gold medallist Matt Richards is spearheading the launch of Sponza, a new SportTech platform designed to modernise how brands discover, connect with and activate athletes.
Richards reached the top of international swimming early in his career, becoming one of the youngest Olympic gold medallists in British history at Tokyo 2020 before going on to secure a second Olympic title and multiple world-level medals in recent years.
Yet despite competing – and winning – at the highest level, he experienced firsthand how slow, opaque and relationship-dependent sponsorship processes can be.
“Despite competing at the highest level, accessing brand opportunities wasn’t straightforward,” said Richards. “The process was often manual, unclear and limited to a small group of athletes.
“At the same time, brands want authentic partnerships without inflated costs or unnecessary friction. That disconnect is what led me to build Sponza.
“The market’s response to that solution has been immediate. During a brief pre-launch window, Sponza has already seen more than 5,000 athletes and brands from over 50 different sports join the waitlist to be part of the platform’s ecosystem.”
Built as modern operational infrastructure for athlete marketing, Sponza gives brands direct access to a broad and relevant athlete ecosystem, streamlining everything from talent discovery and campaign creation to activation management – without the operational overhead associated with traditional approaches.
Athlete marketing has become an increasingly important performance channel for brands, yet execution remains fragmented and difficult to scale. Activity is often spread across agencies, internal teams, spreadsheets and inboxes, slowing campaigns and limiting access to emerging or non-obvious talent.
Sponza exists to change that. By centralising the athlete marketing workflow into a single platform, Sponza enables brands to move faster, execute smarter campaigns and maintain transparency and control over athlete partnerships – while enabling fairer, more direct collaboration with athletes.
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“At its core, Sponza is infrastructure,” Richards added. “We’ve built a system that allows brands to scale athlete marketing programmes without increasing headcount, agency fees or operational complexity. It’s about making athlete partnerships work with the efficiency and accountability of any modern marketing channel.”
Rather than focusing solely on follower counts or top-tier names, Sponza helps brands unlock value across a wider athlete ecosystem – surfacing relevant talent based on performance, audience alignment and campaign objectives, and enabling cost-effective activation at scale.
The platform has been designed to complement existing brand and agency strategies, providing the tools and visibility needed to execute athlete marketing with greater speed, consistency and confidence.
Sponza’s mission is to modernise athlete marketing by giving brands a faster, fairer and more scalable way to work with athletes. Its long-term vision is to become the underlying infrastructure brands use to power athlete partnerships globally.