Beyond The Pitch with Joao Martins
Sport and education are the same market. The value is in the audience, not the activity. Most clubs and schools are sitting on commercial value they cannot see.
Beyond the Pitch breaks that down. Each episode takes apart the commercial decisions behind the biggest properties in sport and education. Not the results on the pitch. The partnerships, the pricing and the positioning most operators never think to question.
I’m João Martins. I run Fever Pitch, a sports and education agency that builds and operates commercial assets for clubs and international schools in Europe. Fever Pitch is the commercial partner to Estoril Praia. I’m not analysing this from the outside. I’m operating inside it.
For the people who run these organisations: club MDs, school CEOs, commercial directors, and the investors who back them.
New episode every two weeks.
Beyond The Pitch with Joao Martins
Latest Episodes
Enrichment: Why International Schools Sell Every Subject as an Outcome and Sport as a Hobby
Pick up any international school prospectus. It will tell you where its leavers went to university, what the average IB score was, which medical schools and conservatoires they got into. Every subject is sold as an outcome.Then you reac...
Three Years of Optionality for Students: What the Best Schools Understand About Elite Sport
50% of professional football academy players in Europe are released before the age of 16. Not at 18. Not at the end of school. At fifteen, before any meaningful academic qualification, before any alternative pathway exists.Within three w...
The Importance of Being Eton: Why Brand Hierarchy Now Beats a $162M Campus for International Schools
In August 2026, one of Thailand's largest infrastructure groups will close a school they spent $162 million building and reopen it under the name Wycombe Abbey. Same campus. Same location. Higher fees.That decision tells you everything a...
The IMG Academy: building a $1.25 Billion Sports Education Empire
Most sports academies sell coaching. IMG Academy sells college scholarships.A tennis coach borrowed $1 million to buy a tomato field in Florida. 46 years later, it sold for $1.25 billion. How? By understanding what parents actually h...
Location Arbitrage: Why Your Club's Zip Code is More Valuable Than It´s Striker
This week, we rip up the traditional football business model. For decades, clubs have chased volume, copying giants like Real Madrid while ignoring their most valuable, non-replicable asset: their location.João breaks down ...
