Miles Jacobson

Miles Jacobson is Studio Director of Sports Interactive, the creators of the modern day Football Manager series, and original creators of the Championship Manager series.

Before he moved into the gaming industry Miles had a successful career in the music industry working with bands such as Jesus Jones, Dubstar, Shampoo, Blur, Feeder, Fat Boy Slim and The Bluetones.

Miles’ involvement with Sports Interactive began when he was invited to become a game tester in his spare time whilst maintaining a successful career in the music industry. Over time he became more involved in the company, becoming a business consultant in 1997, and was perfectly placed to take over as Managing Director.

During Miles’ time at the studio, Sports Interactive have gone from strength to strength, with over 15 million games sold, six titles in the top 10 fastest selling PC games of all time list in the UK (including five of the FM series) and over 200 weeks at No.1 in the PC charts. Sports Interactive also have 5 games in the top 20 best selling PC games of all time in the UK. The game has also been developed for PSP, iPhone, iPod Touch and has recently been released for iPad for the first time.

In 2009 the Football Manager database was officially ‘signed’ by Everton Football Club to become part of the back room team – providing manager David Moyes and his coaching staff access to the database of players and the largest scouting network in football with over 1,000 scouts globally.

Under his stewardship, Sports Interactive have also signed sponsorship deals with AFC Wimbledon (main club sponsor since their inception), Luton Town (youth team) and Watford (official partner of their Harefield Academy work).

Sports Interactive have so far won four BAFTAs, a plethora of Golden Joysticks, awards from Develop, MCV, Indin and Fasttrack as well as various awards from magazines and websites around the world for their work on one of sport’s most successful franchises.

Outside of Sports Interactive, Miles is heavily involved with the Warchild charity, and works with them as part of their entertainment committee who are involved with putting on fundraising event and records that have so far included the Heroes album, the Young Soul Rebels single, and gigs with the likes of Kasabian, La Roux, Al Murray, Jason Manford, Madness, Plan B, The Killers and Coldplay (the latter pairs gig also involved an encore featuring Gary Barlow and Bono).

Miles is a founding trustee of the GamesAid charity, a broker for charitable activity on behalf of the games industry as well as a sponsor of the Paddington Academy. He is also currently working on a charitable project in Mozambique, giving local villages business opportunities whilst also helping the environment by planting fruit trees which thrive in the area. He recently became involved with the Nordoff Robbinns music therapy charity, where he is part of a committee that organises the annual Football Extravaganza dinner, the last of which raised over £400,000 for the charity.

A former Entrepreneur of the Year (London) finalist, Miles serves on the BAFTA steering committee for videogames and the Develop conference steering committee, and has previously been on the steering committee for the Edinburgh Interactive Festival. He has also appeared as a panelist and interviewee at festivals and conferences, not just for the games industry, but also at the Edinburgh TV festival, and MusicAlly, as well as regularly appearing on national and regional radio and TV.

In 2011 Miles was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to the gaming industry.