Miles Jacobson, OBE

Studio Director, Sports Interactive (SI)

Miles Jacobson OBE is the Studio Director of Sports Interactive (SI), the studio behind the best-selling Football Manager series. Miles has been involved with SI for more than 25 years and has been running the studio since 1999. Miles joined as a voluntary, part-time tester on Championship Manager 2 back in 1994 when SI had just six members of staff and, under Miles’ management, SI has grown to become one of the best-known names in game development.

He has overseen the transition from Championship Manager to Football Manager (2004) and the acquisition of the studio by SEGA (2006). SI – a group of six when Miles first became involved – now boasts a team of more than 200, based at Here East, the former Olympic media centre in Stratford, East London. In 2011, Miles was named an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for his services to the games industry.

Since the advent of Football Manager, the studio has enjoyed consistent critical and commercial success, winning numerous awards, sitting atop the PC games charts for a record-breaking number of weeks and racking up more than 18 million sales.