Students put business brains on at UCFB Sports Entrepreneur Event

Many students made their way to Wembley Stadium earlier this month to put forward their business ideas for a chance of earning some funding at the UCFB Sports Entrepreneur Award Event.

A total of £24,000 was funded to a handful of projects and business propositions, set up by our students, to help propel their and grow their organisations.

Two joint-winners earned £5,000 for their ventures. They were:

• Brendan Hourihan from KnockOut Clean Ltd, which provides a way of cleaning boxing gloves for amateur and professional boxers
• Micheal Oladokun and Oliver Sturrock-Leaton from Pure Stats – an AI-focused data and performance analysis company, which finds data for football clubs and players

The two joint-silver medallists, who were awarded £4,000 in funding, were:

• Harrison Bostock of One Golf Society, which brings together amateur golfers and their profiles, so they can play and organise events together
• Toby Little, who created The Arsenal Feed, a multimedia hub which contains edits, stats and many other factors all focusing on Arsenal FC

£3,000 was also given out to two bronze award winners, who were:

• Fin Booth at Coach2Club, a recruitment agency for coaches, based on an app and database which compares aspiring coaches to opportunities available
• Lucy Casey and Daniel Marshall, two BA (Hons) Multimedia Sports Journalism students who have created The Woodwork, a multimedia football company which welcomes contributions from aspiring sports journalists (many at UCFB) who wish to gain experience

Other business ideas put forward included a hospitality and tourism venture focusing on the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, a sports innovation hub based in Cambridge and a business dedicated on developing coaches.

Joint winner Brendan Hourihan said: “I’m very grateful for the opportunity from Brendan, the university and all the staff have provided. And I’m going to keep going from here.”

Fin Booth added: “I really am excited. A lot of hard work really has gone into it. I hope to use a lot of UCFB’s network (going forward).”