The London studio behind the Football Manager series, owned by Sega.
Sports Interactive is a British studio best known for Football Manager, the game in which you run a football club, pick the team, sign players and set tactics. It also made the NHL Eastside Hockey Manager games and other sports management titles. Football Manager is powered by a huge database of players and staff, and the studio says that data is checked by more than 1,400 researchers around the world.
The studio was founded in July 1994 by brothers Oliver and Paul Collyer, and it first made the Championship Manager games. In 2003 it split from its publisher, Eidos, keeping the Football Manager code and database. Sega signed the studio that year and bought it in 2006, when it had 34 staff. It is now part of Sega Europe. We did not find a mission statement written by the studio, so we have not invented one.
Sports Interactive is based in London. It moved from Old Street in Islington to Here East, in Stratford on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, in 2018. Wikipedia reports 285 permanent employees in 2024, plus the worldwide network of researchers who gather the football data, many of them football fans who work part time. A 2024 company press release puts the full-time team at more than 290 people and says Football Manager 2024 passed seven million players in barely three months. The studio is an official partner of clubs and bodies including Manchester City, Brighton and Hove Albion, UEFA and the Bundesliga.
The studio has won Best Places to Work awards, in 2021 and 2023, and received a lifetime achievement award at the Develop:Star Awards in 2024. Miles Jacobson is studio director and Matt Carroll is chief operating officer, and the Collyer brothers and Jacobson have received OBEs. Since 2006 the studio has given part of its game sales to the charity War Child, raising over £1.5 million. These are public accolades, so ask current staff what the day-to-day is like. Miles Jacobson said of the 2024 milestone that it gave him and everyone at the studio enormous pride. The studio also moved the game to the Unity engine and added women's football, which shows how many specialist skills are needed.
A football management game needs many kinds of people: programmers, designers, artists, data specialists, testers, community and marketing staff, and producers. If you enjoy football, data and problem solving, it is a good example of how a sport and a passion for numbers can turn into a games career. The studio's careers page lists the roles it is recruiting for now.
Website: www.sigames.com
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