Sports Interactive began as a hobby that got out of hand. Paul and Oliver Collyer, two brothers from Shropshire, wrote a football management game for themselves because none of the ones in the shops was the game they wanted to play. Domark published it in 1992 as Championship Manager, to lukewarm reviews. Twelve years later the brothers’ company was one of the best-known studios in Britain, and when it fell out with its publisher over the game’s name, it took the game with it and called it Football Manager.
Fast facts
- Founders: Paul and Oliver Collyer. Miles Jacobson, who began as a data researcher, became managing director and later studio director.
- Registered: 21 July 1994, as Imagecharm Limited; renamed Sports Interactive Limited that November. The game it is known for is two years older than the company.
- Based: London.
- Publishers: Domark, then Eidos (Championship Manager, 1992 to 2003); Sega (Football Manager, from 2004).
- Owner: Sega, since April 2006.
Two schoolboys with a hobby
“It literally was two schoolkids with a hobby, and when they had time, they coded,” Jacobson told Retro Gamer in 2006. “They made the game for themselves.” Their friends persuaded them to send it to publishers, and Edge later reported that the first version was written in BASIC on the Amiga. Domark released it in 1992 for the Amiga, the Atari ST and the PC. The original had no real players and very little to look at: Amiga Format scored it 41% and found its tables and text screens “quickly gets boring”. The management game entry tells that story.
Retro Gamer says the brothers founded Sports Interactive the same year, 1992, but the company register says otherwise. Sports Interactive Limited was incorporated on 21 July 1994 under the name Imagecharm Limited, and took its present name on 9 November 1994. Edge in 2010 and the studio’s own website both give 1994. Until then the games were credited to the brothers themselves: Amiga Power’s 1993 review of Championship Manager ’93 named “Paul and Oliver Collyer” as the authors.
Championship Manager
The second year made the series. Championship Manager 93/94 arrived “almost exactly one year later”, in Retro Gamer’s words, with real player names, overseas players, reserve teams and international transfers, and began the habit of a new edition every season. By April 1995 Amiga Computing reported that Championship Manager had sold more than 250,000 copies. Full sequels followed in 1995, 1999 and 2003. When Eidos took over Domark in 1995, the series moved with it, and PC Gamer named Sports Interactive as the developer of Championship Manager 97/98, published by Eidos.
In 1997 PC Zone found the brothers in “an ex-clinic in a quiet street in North London”, its door marked by a poster of the Bulgarian striker Hristo Stoichkov, working on four things at once: next season’s update, Championship Manager 3, a multimedia history of football and an arcade football game. Paul Collyer explained what set their game apart from its rivals: “These other games are made by jobbing programmers. They’re hired for the game, told what to do, and they do it. Whereas we love football, and we’re doing this game because we want to.”
The studio also kept talking to its players after the game was sold. In 1999, as Championship Manager 3 came out, Oliver Collyer told Edge why the studio gave away patches and data updates: “Sometimes, you just don’t discover play issues until a quarter of a million people have played it. You have to listen to what people are saying and to improve things where you can.” The data came from fans too. Jacobson had made unofficial data updates in his spare time while working in the music business, and by 2004 Sports Interactive said it had around 2,500 volunteers watching league football in 40 countries. Some of them slipped themselves into the database. “Some of those you mention we didn’t even know weren’t real until well after the game was out,” Jacobson admitted in 2006; the studio then adopted a policy of no fake players. Its best player ever, he said, was Zinedine Zidane, “the only player to ever have ‘200’ potential in the database”.
Football Manager
In 2003, Retro Gamer reported, “it was announced Sports Interactive would no longer develop games under the brand Championship Manager as this was owned by publisher Eidos”. Eidos kept the name and set up its own studio to carry it on. Sports Interactive kept its code, signed with Sega, and bought the name of Kevin Toms’s 1982 Football Manager from Prism Leisure. Football Manager 2005 came out in November 2004. Jacobson played down the rivalry that followed: “Some sections of the press have tried to build up a rivalry between the two studios, but there isn’t really one, or certainly not from our side.”
Sega bought the studio in April 2006. By 2010 it had more than 70 full-time staff, and Football Manager came out almost every autumn, on the PC and the Macintosh, and for a time on the Xbox 360 and the PSP. The run broke in 2025, when the studio cancelled Football Manager 25 after two delays, telling players that it had not “achieved what we set out to do in enough areas of the game”. Football Manager 26 followed in November 2025. The studio’s website now describes a team of nearly 300 people at Here East in east London, with Jacobson as studio director. The Football Manager entry tells the series’ story in full.
Sources
- Companies House, Sports Interactive Limited, company number 02950954 (web, public record): incorporated 21 July 1994 as Imagecharm Limited; renamed 9 November 1994. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02950954
- Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010, “Region Specific” feature on London: Sports Interactive’s “inception in 1994”.
- Sports Interactive, “About” (web): founded in 1994 by Paul and Oliver Collyer; a subsidiary of Sega since 2006; nearly 300 staff at Here East; Jacobson as studio director. https://www.sports-interactive.com/about
- Retro Gamer issue 32, 2006, pp. 31–37: football management feature (the Collyers “whilst schoolboys in Shropshire”, “two schoolkids with a hobby”, the 1992 release for the Amiga, ST and PC, the company dated to the same year, Championship Manager 93/94, the sequels of 1995, 1999 and 2003, fake players, Zidane, the 2003 announcement, the name bought from Prism Leisure, the rivalry with Eidos).
- Amiga Format issue 37, August 1992: Championship Manager review, 41%.
- Amiga Power issue 27, July 1993, p. 71: Championship Manager ’93 (Domark; original game by Paul and Oliver Collyer).
- Amiga Computing issue 89, April 1995, p. 87: Championship Manager “sold over 250,000 copies”.
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 55, April 1998, p. 14: correction naming Sports Interactive as developer of Championship Manager 97/98, published by Eidos.
- PC Zone issue 50, May 1997: visit to the Collyer brothers (the North London office, the four projects, “jobbing programmers”).
- Edge issue 76, October 1999: interview with Oliver Collyer, “co-founder of Sports Interactive” (patches and updates, “a quarter of a million people”; the first game written in BASIC for the Amiga).
- Edge issue 140, September 2004, pp. 76–83: “The beautiful game” (Jacobson’s data updates; 2,500 researchers in 40 countries).
- Edge issue 221, December 2010: interview with Miles Jacobson (more than 70 full-time staff).
- Sports Interactive, “A Message from Sports Interactive, An Update on Football Manager 25”, 6 February 2025 (web): the cancellation. https://www.sports-interactive.com/news/message-sports-interactive-update-football-manager-25