Welcome to the ‘Meet the team’ series. To give you a glimpse of what it’s like to work at Futures, we’ve conducted a series of interviews with members of the team, across various levels of seniority and experience. Each person has been asked the same questions about their role, but have also answered a mix of questions on challenges they’ve faced, interview advice, the sports industry etc.
What is your current position and how long have you been with the business?
I am a graduate analyst and have been with the business for just over a year, having joined straight out of university.
What are your current core responsibilities?
I spend the majority of my time working on the WRC account. I work on many different areas of the account, from audience analysis to exposure monitoring. As WRC is a fairly new account, there’s plenty of opportunity for us to change and improve our internal processes and experiment a bit. It’s been really rewarding to see everything improve behind the scenes on the account. I am also part of the python working group, where we use python to help try and automate many of our daily tasks. My previous coding knowledge covered a completely different area to the code I write now, so it’s been a really fun learning experience. I got the opportunity to talk about all of these things, and more, when I recently attended the Leeds University careers fair with my colleague Mark.
What are some of your biggest highlights in your time at Futures?
Our regular socials are always lots of fun. Since I’ve joined we’ve played mini golf, virtual clay pigeon shooting and watched live tennis to name a few. Our team trip to Valencia earlier in the year was a great highlight, getting to explore a new city and stumbling upon the abandoned F1 circuit!
How do you think the sports industry will change over the coming years?
I think the way sport is consumed will change dramatically over the next few years, with the rise of platforms like TikTok reducing the attention span of the public. Increased competition in types and amount of content means major sports broadcasters and leagues will produce much more short form content to try and keep up pace with this change. We’ve already seen it with sprint races in F1 and MotoGP, the Hundred in cricket and (a personal favourite of mine) the snooker shoot out. I don’t think these shortened formats will ever replace the traditional sporting formats, but we definitely have to get used to them for the foreseeable future.
Do you have any advice for applicants?
Yes, be yourself. That’s an often over used piece of advice but I think rightfully so. It’s the differences between us that make us interesting and make us stand out amongst each other. Tell us about you, what makes you tick, what you enjoy (if you’re applying to futures, I assume you have at least a vague interest in sport, tell us what that is!). There are a whole range of different people working at futures with different skills, experiences, hobbies and interests – both inside and outside of work - and that helps make working here interesting. So, if you’re thinking “I probably wouldn’t fit in”, you’re probably wrong.